Get rid of black shadow behind all objects on the monitor

[tokyotechy]

Monitor: Asus VX24A at 2560x1440 native
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Core i5 6500
GPU: ATI Radeon Pro 5770 (disabled)
Motherboard: Gigabyte LGA 1151 Z170 GA-Z170-HD3
Connection: HDMI from monitor to motherboard

I'm posting a photograph of my problem because a screenshot doesn't capture the issue:

I need to preface that I'm coming from using Mac, which always uses very high density and high resolution screens, so I'm used to perfect image quality. This is the first time in 5 years that I've actually looked at Windows OS (10) with a non-Apple screen.

I'm seeing a shadow around many objects displayed on my monitor. It's more prevalent on gray objects and text. Look at the up/down arrows and grey circle in the screenshot of Reddit above. It is darker around the edges. On an Apple monitor, there is no shadow / border around those elements. I believe this has something to do with aliasing? How do I get rid of this effect?

In my bios, I've disabled my graphics card and switched to onboard graphics. The reason being my graphics card is so old that the HDMI only outputs a maximum of 1080p. It supports 2560x1440 over DVI, but my monitor has no DVI input. Only my Core i5 6500's graphics processor can support 2560x1440 over HDMI.

 

[tokyotechy]

I found out it was this stupid Asus proprietary thing called "vivid pixel". I think it is equivalent to "sharpness" on TV's. I turned it down to 0 in the monitor settings. The default setting was just horrendous.

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1009744/