Thanks for the reply. I wonder if I damaged the video card drivers, whether it would be possible for them to cause physical damage to the video card by communicating with it poorly.
In any case, I ran to the store and grabbed a replacement video card... a gtx 260, and after rearranging...
When I boot up, during POST I can see vertical dotted lines of colours, during Vista's boot screens i see thick vertical bands of blue, and when Vista attempts to load my monitor's native res of 2560x1600 I get nothing but a black screen.
Video card dead right?
When I start up in safe mode...