Machine is AMD-K6-2/350, 128MB RAM, RedHat 6.0 + All errata to date, running KDE. APM is enabled, and is disabled now to see if this may affect things. Running the kde screen savers seems to reset the time when they come out of the screen saver, this also happens on the GNOME screen savers. Two machines have done this, both are physically identical, but a DELL OptiPlex Gn doesn't do this and is configured the same way.
did disabling APM fix things?
problem unreproducible at this point, bug closed.