Comment 3 for bug 696122

i915.powersave=0 didn't change anything. I saw this:

http://superuser.com/questions/100654/ubuntu-9-10-screen-flickering-problem-on-thinkpad-r31-with-intel-83830-graphics

Not sure if it's relevant at all but since screen flicker has been around since 9.10 as far as I can tell it may. I've set the i915.modeset=0 in grub and we'll see how it works over the next few days.