Issue with Rift

[Harry Botter]

I play Rift through Steam and about every 10-20 minutes it freezes for about 5 seconds then black screens, then runs normal till it does it again. Anyone know the cause or solution?

i5-3570k
gigabyte 7950
asus p8z77 lk
ocz 600 psu

This is the only game giving me this issue.

[RoninaThorstone]

that sounds more like a directX issue...

[Acquiesce of Telara]

I don't play through Steam, and I'm not suffering your situation, but it sounds like it could possibly be a graphics card driver failure.

Awhile back I could be doing anything, even browsing the web, and everything would go blank, then when it'd kick back in, I'd have a Windows notification popup telling me my Nvidia graphics driver had failed. From that point on (until I don't know when) things would be fine with the backup. Didn't occur every day, just happened sometimes.

If you're playing with maximized windows, that pop up notification might never reach you.

Hope that helps, apologies if it sounds like nonsense.

[Tarien]

Sounds like what Acquiesce says, your gfx card driver has failed and then windows recovers. Depending on the severity of the error, it can cause what you are suffering, crash the game, or even cause a full reboot.

[Onorvele]

If Rift is the most graphics intensive game you're running (because of settings or whatever), the recurring failure might be getting triggered due to heat. There's a free tool out there called SpeedFan that will be able to chart temperature over time, if your graphics card makes that data available. Depending on the card, anything over 70 degrees Celsius is probably not good.

[Fluffygong]

I agree with the above, before taking any extreme actions I'd first make sure that you're running the latest version of your drivers for your graphics card.