LinuxQuestions.org - ATI Radeon blurry distored in X (proprietary driver)

I have the latest proprietary drivers for ATI Radeon PowerColor 9600 Pro working. But I get distorted, blurry text and artefacts on windows in X (2D). 3D is fine. A screenshot:

www DOT utsc DOT utoronto DOT ca/~01kassil/blurry_screen.jpeg

Fiddling with driver section in XFree86Config has yielded only this: If I disable 2D acceleration, quality improves at expense of speed. Using external GART has no effect.

Anyone else out there putting up with this annoyance? Any ideas appreciated !!

-- System Details --
Distro is Gentoo. Kernel is 2.6.9. xfree86 4.3.0.
System is an AthlonXP on a MSI KT3 board with the VIA KT333 chipset.

$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9600 Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3.4641 (X4.3.0-3.14.6)

$ /sbin/lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333 AGP]
0000:00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc DL10050 Sundance Ethernet (rev 12)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge
0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)0000:00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 40)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AP [Radeon 9600]
0000:01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AP [Radeon 9600] (Secondary)

$ dmesg |tail -n40
Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.
[fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 431 MBytes.
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 3.14.6 [Oct 30 2004] on minor 0
Fire GL built-in AGP-support
Based on agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: Detected a VIA KT266 missing the AGPv2 registers, chip might be a VIA KT400 or compatible. (VIA flag)
agpgart: Detected a Via Apollo KT400 chipset in AGP v2 compat mode at 0000:00:00.0
agpgart: Detected Via Apollo KT266/KT266A/KT333 chipset
agpgart: AGP aperture is 128M @ 0xe0000000
Power management callback for AGP chipset installed
[fglrx] AGP detected, AgpState = 0x1f000217 (hardware caps of chipset)
AGP: Found 2 AGPv2 devices
AGP: Doing enable for AGPv2
[fglrx] AGP enabled, AgpCommand = 0x1f000314 (selected caps)
[fglrx] free AGP = 121909248
[fglrx] max AGP = 121909248
[fglrx] free LFB = 122679296
[fglrx] max LFB = 122679296
[fglrx] free Inv = 0
[fglrx] max Inv = 0
[fglrx] total Inv = 0
[fglrx] total TIM = 0
[fglrx] total FB = 0
[fglrx] total AGP = 32768
atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program, like XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly.