interestingly enough, i had the same problem way back in v8, i just thought it was a corrupt font so did nothing about it (other than change the font. or font size, can't remember).
surprised it's not been picked up before now......
Proanimator has the same issue, more exciting in 3D. Seems to have something to do with using the GPU. Proanimator has a Spike Busting slider. Problem seems to go away when you do a software render.
Do these spikes show up in the rendered output?
Most GPU accelerated apps give you the option of using a software only render which is slower but more accurate.
Bob? I am not wholly convinced it is a Graphics acceleration or whatever . . . I think this is a graphics's "bug", resulting from pushing the Stroke slider to the upper most. The spikes are clean and perfectly reflect the angularity of the underlining angle of the graphic too!
My opinion? This Stroke slider hasn't been debugged for this "shape". I don't think this is a maths-graphics issue. I think this is far simpler? If you know what I mean . . ?
I remember seeing this type of artifact in the early days of Corel Draw. It was caused by an odd combination of settings for outline thickness (on the type) and the type of line "join" and/or "termination" set in the preferences. It wasn't a bug per se, just the result of settings outside the norm.