Hrm. I cannot re-create:
I am on a 2010 MBP (MacBookPro6,2), NVidia GT 330M (512MB) running 10.7.2
I am running in Max 6. Are you on 10.6.x, under Max 5 ? Mind giving us a little more to go on ? 😉
Could be a color space issue with 10.6.x, Quartz Composer (which is what Simple Client and Server are using behind the scenes) does color management. Jitter, etc, does not. So there may be a slight difference, but it should not be as drastic as in your shot.