screen resolution

[Nikolai]

I just installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake and am enjoying it. I must say I 
was amazed at how easy and quick the installation went but as I'm now 
trying to configure the system to my liking and needs, some questions 
arise. I'm hoping to receive some valuable advice here but I'll take it 
one step at the time.

Screen resolution - as the installation was complete, it defaulted to 
1600x1200 and even though I wouldn't mind running my system at the 
resolution that high, I would rather prefer to have it at 1280x1024 
instead. I went to System->Preferences->Screen Resolution and changed it 
to 1280x1024, the screen went black, then I was sent to login screen 
(lost an unsaved document in the meantime), logged in, the resolution is 
back to 1600x1200. Tried a couple of times more, same thing. Any ideas 
what's going on?

My video card is Radeon X1600 Pro with 256mb, I looked at xorg.config 
and under "Device" section I have:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"ATI Technologies, Inc. ATI Default Card"
	Driver		"vesa"
	BusID		"PCI:1:0:0"


I'm guessing perhaps I should install the ATI driver for it seems like 
at the moment I'm using a generic driver, no? I was intending to do that 
anyway but in the meantime, before I gather info on how actually do 
that, can this little annoyance be fixed some other way?

Thanks,
Nikolai