I've seen the streaks you speak of on a few CRTs I've had, usually when they start to get old they do that.

I found the biggest annoyance with aging CRTs was switching from a white screen to a black screen, (example, black desktop, and then full screen explorer window), the image would get slightly bigger when I switched to a white screen. I still have a CRT monitor "just in case" I ever need one, but its been in the basement beside my old p3 desktop.

to rule out the graphics card being bad or faling, try a different monitor ans see if it's still the same.
if it shows o a different monitor then it's the graphics card.
I have a ati AIW that's funky similiar to that but with faint vertical lines.

Seeing as this turned out to be a probable hardware issue, I moved the thread to the appropriate forum.

I did just recently switch from the PCI video back to the integrated ATI video, which I had been intending to do since shortly after switching to the PCI. The mobo/bios apparently has issue with ignoring the integrated graphics when a second card is added. I tried two different cards in this machine, and both of them had trouble with both 2D and 3D acceleration...the Geforce6/256 performance was worse than I used to get with a Geforce2/64. Granted that's comparing PCI with AGP, but still the Geforce6 shouldn't be anywhere near that bad. 2D acceleration is much better now with the integrated video -- 3D acceleration is non-existent with the available drivers, but at least I can play fullscreen video again -- so it will do until I switch systems. It may be the source of this ghosting, though.

The next system waiting to be installed isn't a big improvement in terms of the basic specs (same p4 3ghz processor, 1gb ram as opposed to 512mb), but it's a custom build rather than the assembly line HP I'm using now. Still going to be using the PCI video, though, until I find a decent AGP nvidia card (no PCI-e on the board, and I still have no faith in the ATI Linux drivers). Who knows, though...the PCI card might turn out to be adequate considering I have no interest in cutting-edge gaming. As long as I can do some sculpting and video in Blender and occasionally load UT I'll be happy.

AGP do people still use these I though all boards were at least PCI EXPRESS now

Maybe *now*, but my machines are several years old...i think the newest one was built about 5 or 6 years ago. The one I'm using now does have a PCI-e slot, but my hand-me-down PCI-e card doesn't work well...maybe it isn't getting enough power, or the DVI-to-VGA translation is flakey, or maybe the card is just messed.

I can't justify replacing hardware that still works, and since I don't use Windows or play cutting-edge games I don't have a need for a quad-core machine with 6gb of RAM and the latest graphics processor. Going from p4 / 512mb / PCI video to p4 / 1gb / AGP is considered a decent upgrade for me. I'd rather spend money on expanding storage (and now apparently replacing the monitor) than on a new mobo + cpu + video + ram, which would essentially be the equivalent of buying a new system. If I'm going to do that I'd just as soon get a cheap laptop.