ATI 1600x1200 VESA Screen Corrupation in W500

[Ryushin]

I've been having this problem ever since I got the W500 18 months. Though the problem has not affected my productivity, I wanted to see if it was just me or if it affected all W500's.

I predominantly run Debian Linux for my OS. But I can get this to happen in any OS or BootStrap.

This only occurs with the Discrete ATI 3650 card turned on when using VESA modes. The Intel VESA modes work fine and there is no screen corruption.

Methods to produce error:
In the BIOS disable switchable graphics. Select Discrete graphics (ATI).

Switch to a 1600x1200 VESA mode. This occurs using Grub2 setting 1600x1200 for the background resolution. If boot Linux or Windows 7 using the VESA driver the problem is still the same.

The symptoms are about every inch you'll get a vertical screen corruption. It's almost as if it copies the immediate 1/4" of the previous frame buffer over to the new area. For example, in my Grub2 layout, I have a menu entry that says "Manual - Kernel 2.6.33 with Resume". But the corruption duplicates several lines, and it actually appears at "Manual - Kernel 2.6.333 with Resume" It added another "3" to the menu entry. It pretty much is this way down the vertical path of those lines. This is kind of hard to explain.

The Intel i965 displays 1600x1200 without any problems.

Can anyone confirm that this is happening to them or if it's just me, I can warranty the laptop. Thanks much.