I thought the days of modelines in xorg (and linux in general) were over but I guess I'm wrong. The last 2 monitors I configured I had really difficult time with. One needed needed just a modeline but the other needed nasty config hacks. The first configuration was a Dell 21" monitor with a i945 graphics card and the other a 22" Chimei CMV-221D/A with an nvida GeForce FX 5200 card.

The Chimei monitor autodected just fine over VGA but was fuzzy and wavy, and hooking it up over DVI, the nvidia card did not want to drive it over 800x600 (instead of native 1680x1050). So I had to get down and dirty with the X configs.

Anyway here are the appropriate sections from my xorg.conf file for the Chimei (I'll post the Dell ones later)

Section "Monitor"

   Identifier      "Generic Monitor"
   HorizSync       30-83
   VertRefresh     60
   Option          "DPMS"
   UseModes        "16:10"

EndSection

Section "Device"

   Identifier      "nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
   Driver          "nvidia"
   Option          "NoLogo"    "true"
   #NOTE this is probably dangerous only use this line with appropriate Modeline
   Option          "UseEdidFreqs"  "false"
   Option          "ModeValidation"    "NoMaxPClkCheck,AllowNon60HzDFPModes,NoVesaModes,NoXServerModes,NoPredefinedModes"

EndSection

Section "Screen"

   Identifier      "Default Screen"
   Device          "nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
   Monitor         "Generic Monitor"
   DefaultDepth    24
   SubSection      "Display"
       Depth       16
       Modes       "1680x1050" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection      "Display"
       Depth       24
       Modes       "1680x1050" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection

EndSection

Section "Modes"

   Identifier  "16:10"
   Modeline    "1680x1050 (GTF)" 154.20 1680 1712 2296 2328 1050 1071 1081 1103

EndSection

Enjoy