I am trying to fine tune my SC Linux but there seems to be a problem with display setting.

I am using HP Pavillion DV1170ca notebook.   After number of days in tweaking my setting,
I found out from internet that putting:
      Modeline "1280x768" 80.14 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 795
should solve the problem.  But it doesn't.  Do I need to install different distribution
of Linux for proper installation or is there some trick in changing the display setting?

Thanks in advance
Kevin