PCI-E Network Card Broadcom NetXtreme Dual-Port 1GbE PCIe (BCM5720)

Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5720-2P Dual-Port 1GbE PCIe Network Adapter

The Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5720-2P is a professional Ethernet connectivity solution for servers and workstations, delivering two independent Gigabit ports on a single PCI Express card. Built around Broadcom's 13th-generation NetXtreme BCM5720 controller, it targets environments where stability, low host CPU utilization, and virtualization support are essential. It is the right choice for expanding a server's network connectivity or for adding redundancy through two separate network paths.

Connectivity and Performance

The adapter provides two RJ-45 ports supporting 10/100/1000 Mb/s speeds per the IEEE 802.3ab standard over Category 5 twisted-pair cabling. Each port operates as a separate PCI Express function, allowing independent management of each network interface. The host interface is PCI Express revision 2.1 at x1 link width, backward compatible with earlier PCIe platforms.

Acceleration and Virtualization Technologies

The BCM5720 features offload technologies including TCP segmentation, TCP/UDP/IP checksum offload, and Large Send, alongside Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) for efficient distribution of network workloads across CPU cores. The card supports 17 receive and 16 transmit queues with 17 MSI-X vectors, as well as VMware NetQueue and Microsoft VMQ technologies to accelerate traffic in virtual machine environments.

Energy Efficiency and Additional Features

The adapter supports Energy Efficient Ethernet to reduce power consumption at low loads, PXE for network boot, and IEEE 1588 / 802.1AS-based time synchronization for applications that demand high timing accuracy. It is suited to x86 and x64 servers based on PCIe v1.x and v2.x interfaces.