I just bought a Broadcom 5751 Gigabit Ethernet card, which is a PCIe x1 card, for my P55 Classified so that I can run ESXi 5.0 without any problems, or at least now I can install it without modifying the ISO for the onboard Marvell NICs.
 
I do have one problem and that is that the Broadcom card won't detect on first cold boot, which means that when ESXi is loaded, it can't find any working network card. When I reboot though, the card is detected and I can see the "boot screen" of the Broadcom card after the normal BIOS POST.
 
Could this be an issue with the broadcom card or is this an issue with the motherboard somehow? Right now it's no real biggie since there is no Wake on LAN function but I do have to restart one time before ESXi is running properly.
 
Tried the same thing booting into Windows 7 and I have the same issue there with the broadcom card not being detected on first boot.
 
I'm grateful for any help or insight into the matter and thanks in advance,
Unkelsunk

Let me bet: you have the A74 Bios? If so, back-up to A72 or earlier.

Yes, I think I am running the latest A74 BIOS. I will try to flash one of the other chips with A72 or earlier and see what happens. A quick question, is there any advantage to running A74 over earlier versions of the BIOS?

mru55


Let me bet: you have the A74 Bios? If so, back-up to A72 or earlier.

 
Flipped the BIOS switch to the second chip, which is still on original A54 and now the Broadcom card is recognized on first boot. Do you have any suggestion on which BIOS version would be the best on for me to flash the second BIOS chip with and run with this configuration I have now?

There is no single answer to this question.
In general: whichever BIOS works best for you.
 
If you have no issues with A54 stay with. Always in the sense of "don't touch a running system!!!!"
If I recall that was the best for USB functionality anyway.