Odd Screen Rendering Issue

[Frank Jahnke]

I have an odd problem with screen rendering in Gnome 2.14: many
applications when displayed give nice, sharp characters and graphics.
Others, though, do not "focus" and stay very blurry.  

One example is invoking Gnome Terminal on an otherwise blank background.
It stays fuzzy.  If that window is raised over a different window, like
a browser showing only Google, then it snaps into focus. No transparency
is on.

I should note that when the application does not "focus", the rest of
the display (icons, tool bars -- everything) remains fuzzy as well.
However, when the application does focus, the entire display does as
well.

It happens with other applications, too.  For example, Freecell is
always defocused, no matter how it is displayed, and everything
displayed on that screen is fuzzy.

If it helps, I'm using Xinerama, and I've seen this for some time with
both a Matrox G450 (open drivers) and with a Quadro FX1000 (nVidia
drivers).  It happens on both monitors, though what happens on one is
not reflected on the other.

Might this be an xorg or Xinerama issue?

The system is Gnome 2.14.3/xorg 6.9.0_4/FreeBSD 6.1-R-p3.

Frank