Intel Pro/1000T frames dropping&overruns

[Mikhail Kuzminsky]

    Dear netters,

we are testing connection of 2 dual nodes w/Pentium III Tualatin
1266 Mhz CPUs (Tyan Thunder S2518 mobos). Both nodes uses
Intel Pro/1000T NIC installed on PCI-64/66 Mhz slots.
(They are "old" cards: we buy them in begin of 2001;
if I'm correct, Intel produce now new modification).
RH 7.2 (kernel 2.4.7-10enterprise, driver e1000 from RH 
distribution) is installed on both nodes.

We found that ping -s 2048 or TCP_STREAM tests of netperf-2.2alpha
leads to "hang up" of connection.
Ifconfig says that there is Rx errors: for something
about 300 packets received we have about 30 dropped and overrruns.
Setting 
options e1000 RxIntDelay=nn

(nn was decreased from 64 to 48, 32, 8, 1,0) didn't help.
Setting of Jumbo=0 don't helps also.

If we transmit small packages (usual ping w/o -s), there is no problems.
Both NICs worked successfully on Athlon/700 Mhz 1-CPU nodes
(but w/PCI-32 and 33 Mhz). I beleive that PIII/1266 CPU
performance is enough for GigE; but I don't know what may
be the other source of packets droppings.

Should I try new e1000 version from Intel ?
I'll be very appreciate in any ideas how to improve the situation.

Yours
Mikhail Kuzminsky
Zelinsky Inst. of Organic Chemistry
Moscow