Setup: Redhat 8.0
Intel 845GEBV2 Motherboard with onboard Graphics & Audio, LG E700S monitor

Problem:
I increased the video frame buffer in the BIOS from 1MB to 8MB. Now XFree86 is able to get a resolution of upto 1280x1024 from the monitor. However it doesn't seem to remember this resolution - every time I start it up, it starts with a default resolution of 640x480 with a virtual desktop size of 1280x1024. I have to cycle through (using Ctrl-Alt-+) different resolutions to get to the desired resolution. Tried specifying the desired resolution from Gnome Desktop Start Menu -> System Settings -> Display but to no avail. Any ideas?

Secondly, I'd like to have different desktop size for each resolution - for eg, I want a 1024x768 Desktop with 1024x768 Screen resolution rather than the default Virtual Desktop size of 1280x1024. Where could I specify this?

Thirdly, how do I get the audio working? It's able to probe the onboard audio device - but still I get "Cannot open audio device" error (when i go to Volume Control, for instance). Needless to mention, there is no sound...

Thanks!

go into the xf86config file and under the screen move the preferred rez to the front of the list.

Tried that but it did not work. Even tried removing the entries for other (lower) resolutions - it still starts up with a screen resolution of 640x480 and a virtual desktop of size 1280x1024!!

When you ran xf86config, did you answer "Yes" to the question about having a virtual desktop size? I think you can edit your XF86Config file to get rid of it, but I don't think my version (4.3) offers it.

if your xfree86 version is 4.x, then try editing things in the xf86config-4 file. as said above, try saying no to the virtual desktop question in xf86config.