This must have changed between the Candidate releases. I downloaded the MAPS version which was released a week or so ago. I didn't have any problems installing it on ESXi 5.0.
But I did hose it up earlier today which is why I'm here. I made a config change that caused Windows 2012 Server Standard to sit there on the boot screen with the circle of balls rolling but didn't think about it at the time. I tried checking the 3D box in the config, but it's greyed out.
Since I have 5.0 (5.1 of ESXi and vSphere soon to be installed), I installed it with the Windows 2008 R2 64-bit O/S setting and didn't have a problem. However, earlier today, I was noticing what it said for Guest OS so I changed it to "Other 64-bit" and typed in "Windows 2012 Standard". Then I got the boot problem. I changed it back to 2008 and it's running fine now -- but still can't activate 3D.
Wade