RADEON 7000 woes (don't laugh)

Hi!

I'm a noob on this forum and also with Windows 7. Here's my problem:

I have an ATi Radeon 7000 graphics card (I know, I know) and a Sony HDS-95D monitor (better?) :-]

First of all, I know that the Radeon 7000 is not supported under Windows 7 and I will probably replace it with an up-to-date card "real soon now".

However...

Windows 7 RC pegs the devices as a standard VGA adapter and a plug-and-play monitor, and I'm cool with that since I don't do games.

Unfortunately, I can't set the display to 1280x1024. I can get 800x600 and 1024x768 since the OS sets the refresh rate to 60Hz. However, if I select 1280x1024 (the display's native resolution), Windows assumes the display wants a refresh rate of 87Hz and the Sony can't handle this.

The Sony appears to be supplying a valid EDID with 1280x1024 @ 60Hz as the preferred resolution but Windows just seems to ignore this. Is this a bug with the VGA drivers? It's a pretty bizzare one if it is. I cannot help but think that it's a dirty trick to encourage me to buy a retail copy of Windows 7 as soon as it hits the Goods In department.

I know that plenty of people have grouched about the fact that they cannot get the refresh rate that they want and have to put up with the "hardware defaults" chosen by Windows. However, the usual complaint is that they can't get *up* to 87Hz, whereas I can't get away from it. :-(

I realise that I ought to get a graphics card that supports Windows 7 and I probably will if only to get DVI output. It just irks me that I cannot get a perfectly reasonable 1280x1024 @ 60Hz. Maybe I'll disassemble vgapnp.sys (it's only 26KB) and see why I must plug-and-pray instead of plug-and play. :-D

Any ideas?