usplash oversized on 800x600

My laptop with an 800x600 screen shows the top left portion of what looks like a usplash screen configured for 1024x768. This is for both startup and shutdown.

reproducable: always on this hardware: Gateway Solo 5300 (800x600)

Ubuntu 6.10 release, freshly installed (not upgraded)

lspci -v output (just video hardware)

01:01.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV (rev 13) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: Gateway 2000 Unknown device 5300
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
        Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128M]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 38000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1
        Capabilities: [80] AGP version 1.0