its about halfway waiting for monitor to show anything, then it goes black and shows the real output

What do you mean "it goes black"? Isn't it supposed to
already be black if it's not showing anything? If not, what exactly
is it showing? If it's showing an error message such as "No signal/Check connection", then your monitor is already on, and it's your
computer that's taking a while to come out of sleep mode, and replacing the monitor won't help.