the 1000mbps gigabit ethernet card attaches to the host computer via the fast and efficient pci bus. the host pci slot can be either 32- or 64-bit, and should be compliant with pci v2.1 or later. make sure the host computer has a 64-bit pci bus in order to take advantage of the full-duplex speed enhancement, otherwise, even though your connection will be full-duplex, the traffic bottleneck at the pci interface will only allow half-duplex equivalent speeds.

    in addition, the 1000mbps gigabit ethernet card uses the following advanced features to maximize the utilization of the pci bus and reduce overhead on the system cpu:

    1 bus master technology - the nic masters the pci bus, freeing the cpu from pci bus management duties.

    2 direct memory access (dma) – enables the nic to write directly to the system memory, freeing the cpu from many memory management duties.

    3 burst transfers – full bandwidth packet bursting across the pci bus increases the throughput for small packets by coalescing transfers.

    4 memory buffers - dual transmit and receive fifo buffers allow for simultaneous reading and writing of data.