[gentoo-server] NIC brands - best for firewall reliability?

[Sancho2k.net Lists]

We've got a dell poweredge 1750 server that we want to use for a firewall.
It has 2 onboard Broadcom BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces (e1000 driver)
and a four port, Intel Pro/1000 card (82546EB Gigabit Ethernet) (tg3 driver).

How would these two cards stack up against each other in terms of
reliability, sustaining consistent thruput, and potential for errors?

My belief is that the Intel card/driver is superior in these areas, and
therefore I would choose to use these ports for high-throughput interfaces
that I can't afford to have interface failure on.

Am I up in the night on this? Can one card be considered better than the
other?

TIA

DS