Problem with ATI Radeon 4850 on New XPS430

I just took delivery today of a new XPS 430 64-bit with the ATI Radeon 4850 dual DVI.  Almost from the moment I took it out of the box, I experienced a fundamental problem.  When the computer boots up, at some point during the boot-up process, the monitor turns black and then says that no signal is emanating from the display card.  I have isolated the problem to the ATI Radeon 4850 software update contained on the Dell website.  This same software also uploads automatically with Windows updates.  Prior to the update, the monitor will run on a very primitive resolution as a "Standard VGA" driver.  But once the ATI Radeon 4850 driver gets installed, I get the black screen of death (actually, the hard drive is still running, but I might as well be a blind man reading a newspaper).

Has anyone else experienced similar issues?  I have placed several calls to Dell tech support; while they are friendly, they are as surprised as I am to learn that the computer out of the box from the factory does not work.

The monitor is a Dell widescreen 24" monitor that came with the PC.