I suspect that monitor was just bunk because it would randomly fire up like it was supposed to but only like 1 in 10 did it actually work and i had to switch it between DVI outs on the vid card to get it working. would be funny if it was just a bad DVI cable since thats the one thing i didn't swap out during testing
either way, its on its way back to tiger direct via ups as of this morning so we can just go ahead and say its the monitor and forget this horrible thing ever happened.
on a brighter note, i managed to get a CPU with bent pins (long story) straightened out and it actually works and doesn't seem to have any issues. i was amazed.
