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Kushal
Asked: 2015-03-15 09:53:41 +0800 CST

Graphics stuttering issue in Ubuntu 14.10 for Intel on-board graphics

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I'm running Ubuntu 14.10, and for the past couple of days, I'm facing graphics stuttering all over Unity, which mainly affects text and various parts of Unity (refer to screenshot).

Jagged graphics

And this particularly happens when I'm using several apps simultaneously like, Chrome (latest), multiple tabs open in Terminal (running node-http-server). And only way I can fix it is by rebooting or by logging out (i.e. resetting Unity session).

Note that it is 5 year old laptop with 3 GB of RAM, 2.0 Ghz dual-core Intel processor, 512 MB of swap memory (using swapfile mounted as Swap memory in /), with only Intel on-board graphics.

What could be the possible cause? as I'm suspecting it is possibly due to low swap memory but this never occurred to me on 14.04.

unity

2 Answers

  1. This kind of error is usually caused by memory issues.

    My 8 year old laptop also has similar issues when I have a lot of tabs open on chrome(around 15 tabs) and when the system uses a lot of RAM. I use indicator-multiload to see how much RAM is used. My laptop only has 2.5 GB of RAM and also has an integrated graphics card.

    My guess would be that the system is unable to display the contents properly due to lack of enough memory.

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  2. Having pstate enabled may actually give you better performance, however, switching to performance over the default will maximize this. To do this, install indicator-cpufreq and then use the indicator to select performance:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

    then, press CTRL + F2, type indicator-cpufreq, and then press ENTER

    Click on the indicator when it appears on your panel and select "performance".

    Next, set compiz for performance:

    sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

    then, press CTRL + F2, type ccsm, and then press ENTER

    Click on "OpenGL" and set "Texture Filter" to Fast.

    Make sure "Sync to V blank" is selected, that Texture Compression is NOT selected, and make sure Frame Buffer, Vertex Buffer, and Always Use Buffer Swapping ARE all selected.

    Click BACK and scroll down to "Effects". Make sure all options under Effects are NOT selected.

    Scroll down to "Image Loading" and make sure all options (jpeg, png, svg, and text) ARE selected.

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