I am running 10.04, had to get rid of nouveau since there was no dual monitor support or fan support. I am running the latest 256.35 Nvidia Drivers. I had a horrible flicker and had to remove nvidia-settings and re-install the 256.35 drivers and everything worked fine. Dual monitor support is perfect and no flicker what so ever. However when I go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and enable normal, I get a horrible flicker and my OS hiccups every 10 seconds for about 10 seconds and it is all I can do to put it back. I am very disappointed, is this a Driver or Ubuntu issue? If it is a driver issue can anyone recommend a video card for ~$100 that will take care of my issue.

I am running the following:
P5LP-LE Leonite motherboard with a Intel E6700 2.65GHz Processor
Geforce 9600GT PCI-E with 512MB memory
Primary Screen is a LG with DVI @ 1440x900
Second Screen is a Acer with DVI @ 1680x1050
4GB Ram