DVI cable, monitor graphics card help

So I just bought a DVI cable to replace a ruined vga and when I hooked it up to my monitor, nothing. I got the "check the cable connection" display and that's it, no problem there though. A buddy let me use a vga cable he had and when that was hooked up to the monitor everything was back to normal. Reconnected the dvi, back to nothig. I can't figure what is going on. I even installed the monitor drivers just to make sure that wasn't the problem. This should be an easy no brainer job. I have a x1950xtx running cat 8.9, and samsung 730b 17" monitor. Any ideas? I'm totally at a loss here.