Ubuntu 13.04 boots to tiled screen, illegible

Ubuntu 13.04 boots to tiled screen, illegible

I recently installed ubuntu 13.04 on my lenovo ideapad y500, seemingly
successfully. During the installation process, I had changed "quiet
splash" to "nomodeset" in the boot options, and everything worked
perfectly.
Now, when I boot into ubuntu without changing this in the boot options, I
get a blank screen. When I do change this, I and presented a terminal in
three locations (One terminal, displayed three times) each of which
occupies a ninth of my screen. Due to the small size, it is very difficult
to utilize this terminal, but I have had limited sucess.
I managed to log in and edit /etc/default/grub so GFXMODE=1920x1080, but
after restarting nothing seems to have changed. It is possible I failed to
save the file, but I think this is not the case.
This is to say nothing of unity or x, which don't start up when I log in,
unfortunately.
I'm thinking I can fix all this by editing the boot options, but I can't
figure out what I need to add/remove there.