On my Debian Squeeze (6.x) installation my system had a nice small login shell font (terminus??) but after installing the nvidia drivers for my machine it boots up using a very chunky font (on a 24 inch screen). I tried to edit the appropriate file leaving font as "fixed" but changing size from 16 to 8 (one of the suggested options) but it made no visible difference. I may wish to occasionally ditch gnome and work purely on a text console.
Any solution or suggestions?