Black screen at boot after install of AMD proprietary driver

[falsechicken]

I replaced my Nvidia GTS 250 with an AMD Radeon HD 7770. Upon booting into Mint 14 Cinnamon x64 I was greeted with a black screen. And sometimes the monitor would just shut off when I should be at the login screen. Incredibly frustrated I re installed Mint and managed to get it to boot by going to recovery and continuing to boot from there. Which seems to use the vesa driver. I went to the software sources and installed the proprietary driver hoping that would fix it. It didn't :/. I still get a black screen at boot and cannot switch to another terminal using CTRL + ALT + F1. I have to restart at this point. I can still use number lock so I am pretty sure the system didnt lock up or anything. Any suggestions? I am seriously at my wits end. The card works GREAT in Windows and I had absolutely NO problems with my Nvidia cards in linux ever. I am really beginning to regret my purchase. (At least on the Linux side)