Need to fix screen rez in linux

ok my default color depth is 24 but i want my screen rez to be 1280 x 1024 now because i have a radeon card i had to run XFree86 -configure in the /usr/X11r6/bin/XFree86 dir. Doing this set up my XF86Config. But when i went in there non of the defaults where there so. I did this to it."Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection
"
That didnt work to change it to the setting i want. SOOO... I tried to add a virtual screen rez then it thew me back an error when i tried to log in to X got any ideas?

are you running DRI?

i am sorry i am not sure what DRI is. All i do know is that i installed the new XFree, then configured it to my box. As far as a DRI i dont know what it is.

This is what I have in a computer of mine's XF86Config-4 file.

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "Matrox Mystique"
Monitor "Compaq V55 Color Monitor"
DefaultColorDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection

Only thing that is really different is the DefaultDepth you have is DefaultColorDepth in mine. I'm not sure if that matters. DRI is direct rendering (basically hardware acceleration) and it is often enabled by the configure program.

Look for aline in there in the Section "Module" and see if DRI is being loaded. From what I understand, DRI will only work on 16 bit color depths. Maybe try changing the depth to see if that helps.