Ok, after finding one of the dupes that was having this issue on the same machine I'm using where I couldn't reproduce it I looked into it a bit more. It looks like having vga16fb loaded (which I had blacklisted) is what's causing the problem and I can reproduce it on a livecd.
** Changed in: xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu) Status: Incomplete => Confirmed -- lshw garbles display https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/528974 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu-X, which is subscribed to xserver-xorg-video-intel in ubuntu. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat Post to : ubuntu-x-swat@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp