I found it under BIOS features. It was PCI ROM priority, default was set at EFI compatible ROM. I changed to Legacy ROM and saved, rebooted. No more problem. Apparently these newer Nvidia PCI 3.0 cards even AMD have some issues with X79 settings.
Having issue with Asus GTX 980 on Gigabyte x79 G1 board. Boot is super slow like it doesn't recognize GPU bios maybe for 45 secs. When I finally get to windows it shows up ok and drivers loaded. Just to make sure not a card issue installed on a a Foxconn H97M board and no issues. Anyone have any...