The OP sent me the board to try out and it is definitely a bad board. I tried everything I could think of including re-flashing the BIOS but I could never get it to operate properly. It appears to be normal until you actually start to use the PCI bus, USB ports, or the built-in Ethernet port. That's when it starts to fall apart, so I suppose it is possible that it passed a Gigabyte test routine if they didn't actually use the ports like we would.
I have a good X4-965 system that I borrowed parts from to use with this board, and I attempted to install Linux Mint 14.2 many times since I had just been doing that on good systems and knew what to expect from it. I am not familiar enough with Linux to do much in-depth diags though.
Using a PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, on-board Ethernet:
The install starts fine but I see some errors scroll by - error reading descriptor on the USB port the mouse is in. lsusb shows the mouse connected and the mouse seems to work fine. Install progresses until it can't detect a network connection. The Ethernet has a link and is flashing from broadcasts on my LAN, but it isn't working.
Using a PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and 802.11b/g USB adapter that I had just used in another install of this OS:(on-board Ethernet disabled)
The install starts fine but I see some errors scroll by - error reading descriptor on the USB ports the mouse and USB NIC are in. lsusb shows them connected and the mouse seems to work most of the time but sometimes the click doesn't do anything. Tried this several times and the USB NIC may light up or may stay dark. Install progresses until it can't detect a network connection.
Using a PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and 802.11b/g PCI adapter :(on-board Ethernet disabled)
The install starts fine but I see some errors scroll by - error reading descriptor on the USB port the mouse is in. lsusb shows the mouse connected and the mouse seems to work most of the time but sometimes the click doesn't do anything. Install progresses and holy cow I can see my wireless SSID and the network is running!!! Go to enter my WPA2 password but the keyboard and mouse aren't responding all of the time, and suddenly the wireless connection is gone. I tried this setup from the beginning again and it never did see my wireless network again.
I tried several other installs, some making it as basic as I could, even with no mouse, and I never saw a network connection again. Looking at the block diagram I'd suspect something with the AMD 970 chip or the Hyper Transport Bus, but it could be anything. I never did see a video problem, lock-up, or reboot in the 2+ hours that I messed with it.