Is your card dual? If so you have more trouble than you think since ubuntu does not by default support dual vga cards (nvidia optimus) at this point.
I have the gt540m and had to do quite some searching on that.
I did my searching in december, and by the time, the only option available was to download a module and run some commands, so that you kill your high end card and only work on your low end, onboard card.
You can find details on that here: http://hybrid-graphics-linux.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Acpi_call
I searched a bit now to look for your answer, and looks like there have been a few developments in the topic in the past couple of months. A team was working on a project called bumblebee, designed to help ubuntu support optimus cards, and they seem to have released it. I found this tutorial on how to use it, but this is something I have not yet used myself/have no idea if it will mess my system up or not.
Long story short, your options are A: kill your card, work with onboard one, or B: try making your system compatible.
Hope this helps. Good luck.