Why can't I see my BIOS screen?

I have an Acer 24 inch monitor that i bought off newegg and i used to have it connected to my video card through an HDMI cable. The monitor was on standby mode for about 30 seconds before i could see anything on the screen so i had the same problem you are having. I stopped using HDMI and started to use DVI since they are the same thing pretty much. What im getting at is try whatever mode your monitor is connected to your pc , try switching to another connection to see if the response time changes in any way.