New Video Card not displaying.. HELP!?

Hi everyone,

Well, I currently have an LGA 1156 setup. I'll be updating to 1155 z77 with hyperthreading soon, but I'd like to get some use out of this awesome high priced video card right now! The video card that works right now, is my old radeon HD 5450. Starts up perfect.

Current setup:

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-H55M-S2V LGA 1156 Intel H55 Micro ATX Intel

Processor: Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80605I5760

PSU: Corsair Professional Series AX 850 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Gold (AX850)

GPU: SAPPHIRE FleX 100352FLEX-2 Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card OC with Boost

Yes, I know I'm bottlenecking the video card, but I'm sure it should work fine until I can afford what I want.

I should be able to simply disable onboard graphics, plug the video card into the correct slot & properly secure it (seat it correctly), start the system up, at which point the graphics card should be showing something, like the boot menu. Then I should see Windows installer checking my new hardware... and install the drivers. I just have black screen. The video card starts up and runs fine, and I pretty much have the nicest PSU you can get and it's brand new. I've had to play musical video cards like 10 times now. Every time, I try something different and reinstall the hardware. Nothing works.

I've read a lot of forums and I've done a ton of troubleshooting. Here's the things I've tried in no particular order:

1. Disable Onboard Graphics - There's no option in my bios for it. My mobo has no onboard graphics per specs, so I don't see a way of disabling it. It has the ports for VGA and DVI, but they don't work. After checking Newegg, where I got it, I think it's made to only use a dedicated graphics card. Using my old video card, when I go to device manager and disable the only thing listed under "display adapters" which is my old currently installed 5450 GPU driver, I can still see my desktop, but I'm assuming that's windows 7? This is really confusing me, because it seems like I'm not doing something on this one and it seems like this is the one holding me up, but I don't have an onboard graphics card?!?!!

2. Resetting CMOS - I see the little CMOS pins on my motherboard, but there are only 2 pins instead of 3 and I don't have a plug to put on it anyway if I ever had one. In the bios, I was able to reset my CMOS settings I think, it was called something else like restore CMOS or something, I'm not sure. Don't know if it achieves the same function either.

3. Flashing the MOBO. - I used the included software @bios by Gigabyte to update the bios firmware to the newest version 3. I'm assuming I don't have to use Q Flash in the bios startup settings, because really, that's what the @bios software is for, and it worked perfectly. It shows my current bios version as the latest. I also loaded the default bios settings afterward. No luck.

4. Updating Catalyst Control Center - It's updated. I was thinking about trying to install the correct driver separately for my new video card, but they seriously want you to use CCC to do it, so I can't find the driver by itself.

5. Enabling Multiple Graphics Cards - I don't see an option for this in my bios. I would love to do this if I saw it somewhere. At this point, I've disabled the old video card driver, just in case it was interfering.

6. Init Display First - The only thing related to video in my bios settings: Advanced BIOS Features>Init Display First>PCI Slot or PEG or PEG2 - I've tried all of these with no luck.

Everything works perfect with the old card every time so there's nothing wrong with my computer... until I try to install the new video card. The card lights up and the fans start running, but no video output. My whole computer is also on and doing things, but I can't tell what it's doing. I think the initial beep is different, not sure, but it sounds like one long beep and 2 short beeps. The video card is seated in the video card slot and it clicks into place. My only other thought is this very expensive card is DOA or my Mobo can't handle it. I'm going bonkers, please HELP!!!