Thank you for the reply.
Yeah, I did look into the documentation. After reviewing I'm still under the impression that the NICs in Windows network connections, should still show connected with out any significant changes to the OS, am I'm in the wrong? I did try a couple registry tweaks as far as RSS and MTU changes, but no change to the NIC state. Attempting to bypass the switch (IB to IB) and even OpenSM on a VMware box didn't resolve the issue either.
Something to note: Changing the system driver to eth and running OPENSM does cause the host to lock up, I don't know why this.
I'm thinking the adapters are too told for the Win2012 R2 drivers, i may need to go back to a supported platform Win 2K8 or a compatible Linux.