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My system has been running fine with the abovementioned card on Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10 for about 2 months. After performing a full reinstall of Ubuntu (to 14.04 again), I have been encountering X.org crashes which sometimes provides me with the dreaded "The system is running in low graphics mode" popup, or sometimes causes my screen to flicker on and on forever till reboot. I decided to upgrade back to 14.10 and kernel version 3.18 in hopes of preventing these errors but to no avail.

From what I have gathered, I've tracked the issue to my graphics card, as seen in kern.log and Xorg.log.

Kern.log:

radeon 0000:01:00.0: ring 0 stalled for more than 10484msec
radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup (current fence id 0x000000000078af4a last fence id 0x000000000078afcb on ring 0)

Xorg.0.log: (I can't find a copy right now that produces the error, but it's along the lines of:)

radeon_dri2_flip_event_handler: Pageflip completion event has impossible msc 1863 < target_msc 1864

I've tried finding solutions online but the only solution I've found is to... buy a new graphics card :( which I want to avoid if I can.

My current driver installed is radeon (output from lspci -v), not fglrx, though I'm not sure if I should try, maybe in a few days when my work is less busy. I was hoping if someone could point me in the right direction as to what I should try and if anyone else faces the same problem.

I am using a Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H motherboard and a Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X card, if it helps.

I am this close to just purchasing Nvidia instead..... sigh.

Irvin Lim
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  • Did you install the proprietary graphics drivers like this: MSI Radeon R9 270 Graphics drivers? If you installed a different driver, what driver did you install? – karel Apr 27 '15 at 15:45
  • @karel I had installed fglrx on my previous install and bricked it. I believe I followed this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/124292/what-is-the-correct-way-to-install-proprietary-ati-catalyst-video-drivers-fglrx from which I couldn't recover my system back to normal (and it wasn't cos of Xorg.conf). Regardless, I will try this again when I have the time. Also, I didn't install any drivers, left Ubuntu to install it for me ever since the fresh install. It's currently the default open-source one. – Irvin Lim Apr 27 '15 at 15:52
  • Some individual attention to your specific graphics card might help because the Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X graphics card is a recent model, so it will probably work better with the most up-to-date proprietary graphics driver. – karel Apr 27 '15 at 16:11
  • @karel thanks. However what do you mean by individual attention? I will try installing the propietary driver again, but I think I installed fglrx-core the previous round which caused it to get bricked. I'll perform a full disk imaging clone before I proceed with it again, though. – Irvin Lim Apr 27 '15 at 16:13
  • Two things. 1. matching the graphics driver to the card instead of simply installing a generic current graphics driver which is supposed to work on almost all Radeon graphics cards 2. The Gigabyte motherboards have had similar problems with graphics cards on Ubuntu, so your problem may have something to do with the motherboard or the motherboard's BIOS settings. – karel Apr 27 '15 at 16:16
  • @karel hmm... I see I see thanks. Didn't know about the Gigabyte one though. If installing fglrx still doesn't work, what do you recommend? Should I just get a new graphics card from nvidia instead? I hear they're less prone to such instabilities in Ubuntu. Regarding BIOS settings, there isn't much to configure for the graphics card though. – Irvin Lim Apr 27 '15 at 16:18
  • I don't recommend getting a new graphics card. This type of problem often disappears by itself in later Ubuntu releases, after the latest version proprietary graphics card driver has had some time to catch up with the newest models of graphics cards. Finding a software solution to the problem if possible is the best way to do it. – karel Apr 27 '15 at 16:21
  • @karel Alright. Thanks a lot for the help. I will try installing fglrx-updates like you mentioned and if I still need help I will post a separate question. Thanks so much for the help! – Irvin Lim Apr 27 '15 at 16:22
  • I have the same issue with an R7 240. Irvin, did installing fglrx help in your case? – mardy Jun 10 '15 at 20:38
  • @mardy I didn't install fglrx, but the problem went away about 2-3 weeks after i posted this question. not sure what was the solution, though in the meantime I had upgraded to 15.04 and kernel 3.19. you might want to try that. – Irvin Lim Jun 11 '15 at 02:14
  • No, I want to stick to the LTS. I found this bug report and I added a comment to it with a possible solution which I found by googling: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/1392727 (adding "radeon.hard_reset=1"). Let's see if that helps. – mardy Jun 12 '15 at 06:48
  • @mardy from what I tried in the past, adding that to grub didn't help me, but no harm trying for you... you might want to try upgrading to 3.19 kernel, since it's more probable the kernel might have fixed it, and you can also remove it and revert back to your original kernel if you need to. – Irvin Lim Jun 12 '15 at 10:11

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