970GTX preventing 1080Ti from loading

I have a 1080ti and a 970gtx in my rig. I needed to clear the CMOS to be able to remove the fast boot option to access the BIOS again. I needed to remove the 970 and a 1080ti to access the motherboard battery. Upon taking care of the bios which now comes up fine. I noticed that when the 970 and the 1080ti are seated upon startup simultaneously, nothing loads it's almost like the 1080ti is waiting for the 970 to get with it, but the never does. the 1080ti won't even light up. When I remove the 970 and restart the 1080ti loads up and works fine. when I plug the 970 alone it works just fine.

I am a bit confused because it worked fine before. The only difference is that I did a Nvidia driver update to the 388.13WQHL. It says both video cards are compatible what am I missing.

I am running win7 enterprise.
24 Ram
MSI afterburner motherboard Z90 I believe

is there something in the MSI boot I need to check?

****Update****

1. I plugged the monitor (s) into the 970 and it worked fine with the 1080Ti removed.
2. dedicated the 970 to physx in the nvidia control panel
3. plugged the 1080 Ti when shut off and restarted the 1080 came on.
4. the 970 being plugged to the monitors displayed nothing so i took the cables and placed the in the 1080 now the screens work????!!!! on the 1080 Ti
5. dedicated the 970 to physx in nvidia.

Can someone explain why this is happening?