Graininess of KDE desktop

Hi:

This may not be a KDE-Look issue but I don't know where to turn. I have
recently downloaded and installed KDE3.1RC5 on my Peanut Linux system (AMD
K6 300, 256 Mb RAM, ATI Xpert98 8Mb, AGP2x) and it runs fine but it doesn't
look great. It has a very grainy look but not related to fonts (I enabled
the antialiasing option and the fonts look fine now). The edges of the
windows look ragged on the corners and parts of the screen tend to flicker
as if it is an interlacing issue with the video driver.

On Windows, the display is smooth and there is no flicker yet in both cases,
I am running 1024x768 at 24bit depth which means to me that the video card
is capable of running at that resolution but something about either KDE or
the Linux driver for the video card is not working as it should.

Any help you may be able to provide me would be great!

Thanks,

Jules