Comment 4 for bug 1358936

I have managed to find a more suitable fix, one which could easily be implemented for other systems using this graphics chip or similar. The Intel X4500 graphics chip does not have dedicated memory for graphics and thus relies on the system memory. From my testing it would appear that Ubuntu by default does not allocate any permanent memory for this graphics chip and thus when a user depletes the the system memory, graphics card suffers as well, hence the graphics distortion.

The logical fix for this is to allot permanent memory for the graphics chip and have the rest available to the OS. This is done by editing grub: "sudo gedit /etc/default/grub" and reducing the amount of ram available to the system. I have 3 GB RAM and the x4500 is said to use up to 384, so 3000-384 = 2616 therefore we place the following line in grub using gedit: "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="mem=2616

When we are done we type "sudo update-grub" in the terminal.

Restart and the problem does not occur anymore.

By limiting the OS to 2616mb ram we are ensuring that it does not tamper with the RAM we have dedicated to the graphics chip. This not not only fixes the graphics distortion issues but also appears to improve performance of the OS overall. Before this implementation I would have to log out once every half hour or less and sometimes restart. With this implementation I have had this pc running for 3 days non stop with out issues.

The original website regarding the GRUB fix is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo