Display not always working with added grahics card

Go into motherboard BIOS, and set the Primary Display as PCI-E. Try that and see if it makes any difference.

I've tried but I cant seem to figure out how to get into the BIOS, i go into the setup when its turning on but I don't see any options for changing anything relating to the video card or display.

I don't know what system you have, so it's either F2 or F8 or the Delete Key.

I hit f2 to go into setup, it says f2 for setup and f12 for boot menu, but im not sure where to go in either of those menu's.

setup is your BIOS menu, you use the arrow keys to move around, enter/esc to go in the menu and out of the menu. Find within the menu Primary Display or Graphics Adapter or something along those lines and change it.

I can get into the setup, but there is nothing in the setup menu at all relating to display or graphics of any kind. I asked a guy at work and he said that since my motherboard was factory, that setting cannot be changed unless i reset the whole BIOS system. is there anything in the control panel that would allow me to change which video card is set to default?

You can try. You can disable onboard graphics in device manager. But it may not show show if the 480 is installed

First off i want to say thanks for responding. Ok, so it seems to be completely random after i turn my pc off and back on whether it wants to run the new card or not. the card runs; its seated correctly, the fan is running all of that, and i do nothing in between when it works and when it doesn't. I cannot get into any of the bios settings that you are describing, they just simply aren't there. I cannot find in my device manger anything that has to do with video cards or pci-e or anything like that, and the same goes when i try to look for something in the nvidia control panel.

keep in mind that my pc is facotry, not custom built and has all the default components save for the video card and a new power supply. the model is a dell xps 8300. for now ive just elected to never shut the computer off, since thats when the problems arise. sometimes the only way it will work is when i plug the hdmi into the onboard, it simply refuses to display anything when connected to the 480. I only have 1 slot to put a video card in, if that makes a difference, this is really starting to piss me off.

Update: I can now see the gtx 480 in my device manger, it says everything is working properly.

Well, odd things happen. Hopefully, it stays working.