You didn't say whether you want to run Windows or linux. All of the relevant parameters can be set when starting up the ethernet drivers. In linux, you can also check or set the parameters you mentioned with ethtool.
In either case, there may be advantages in updating the drivers from the ones installed automatically with your operating system. linux e1000 driver is available from sourceforge.net, and Windows drivers on the Intel driver download site.
For cluster operations, with all ethernet cards identical, you should be able to run with interrupt moderation disabled. Those parameters are set when starting the ethernet card driver, either in your boot files, or by stopping the cards and restarting them one at a time. This may more than double the performance, in some cases, compared to taking default settings of your linux operating system. The e1000 driver from Sourceforge comes with default parameters optimized for transaction processing, which shouldn't cost so much in cluster performance, but still may have trouble communicating with unknown devices on the network.
With Windows, the difference may be even greater, if the default driver doesn't set your card to gigabit speed. Windows drivers typically don't autonegotiate speed beyond 100Mbps, and defaulting to 10Mbps is not unusual. If you set gigabit speed, it will not adjust automatically to speed or duplex settings of other gear on the network.