Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.
I had the exact same issue. It starts mainly because the monitor goes into permanent sleep, which requires you to power cycle daily. 3 years later, I noticed that the monitor would take longer to start up, and soon I had the on/off problem where the monitor would have to warm up for 10...
I am currently testing out a DS-277W, and might also order/test the DS-307w.
There's a lack of configuration options on the OSD compared to the Dell's. There's no sRGB mode. You can control color temp (warm, cool, normal, user (R/B/G bars 0 to 100, 50 is normal)), brightness, contrast...
The 8800gtx lasted as near top of the line for ~2 years (Nov 2006 to late 2008), and it made many shader intensive games easily playable. The most noticeable was Oblivion, which the Ge7 series choked on.
While it was not cheap, and vendors gouged for it, that card gave out great performance...
The OP complained about fatigue, and fatigue is often caused by being on axis with the tweeter, listening to bright sounding audio. Crystalizer brightens audio.
If you need oomph, or rumble, then yes you need a subwoofer. The good news is that decent subwoofers are cheap and very easy to add to an A5 system. All you need is an RCA cable and a low range $100 8" ported subwoofer like an ESW-8.
As for fatiguing,
1) Disable X-Fi Crystalizer, as that's...
The ASW-8 is a rebadged version of the ESW-8 with some cosmetic changes. The sub is good, might be a lil overpriced for the $130 u got it at. You can get the ASW-8 linked above for $99 shipped.
The ASW-8 is the exact sub I added. I got it a bit cheaper though, it was on sale for $80 and there was a stacking 10% coupon that brought it down to $72.