The resolution looks fine size-wise, but pixels are smudged. This is mostly visible on thin writing, as if pixels were slightly shifted out of the intended grid. It always renders like that on one of the monitors chosen at random sometimes along with thin vertical stripes roughly 10px wide.
To make things work I can just bring up the Display settings. Everything seems fine here (1600x900, dual, no changes) >> Hit Apply >> Keep this configuration. Without changing anything, the display looks OK for now, every time. In some cases just bringing up the Display settings without hitting apply will fix it.
However, the problem appears again every time the computer starts, wakes up or the screen is unlocked.
It doesn't seem to be hardware related or related to version of Ubuntu. Just for completeness.
- Both monitors are brand new Dell IN2010Nb, native resolution 1600x900.
- There are no proprietary drivers used on the PC (Dell XPS 210, ATI Radeon X1300 graphics).
- Ubuntu version is 11.10 β. The same problem persisted on 10.10 LTS as well, hence we wiped out the system and installed 11.10 β to see if that resolves the issue. It didn't, but I like 11.10 a lot.