Note that other so called PCI Express chipsets, like the ones from TI are not native PCI Express FireWire chipsets. Instead, TI figured they could save some money, so the slapped their old PCI based FireWire controller on the same chip package as a PCI to PCI Express bridge and called it a day. I know a lot of the musicians and music producers out there are concerned about latency and it's possible that this is what you get with this bridge. You might as well get a native PCI card then and put it in one of the PCI slots on your motherboard, as the 6 and 7-series Intel chipsets (not counting the Q and B series) rely on a PCI to PCI Express bridge as well.
This statement does not look 100% correct...
I've been looking into this matter as I'm planning to build my first hackintosh which I will hook up to an audio firewire device. Here's my two cent after spending a few days of researching...
Texas Instruments currently seem to be shipping two different families of FW chipsets TSBxxxxxx and XIO22xxxx.
The TSBxxxxxx FW chipsets were designed for PCI while the XIO22xxxx FW chipsets were designed for PCIe.
Source:
http://focus.ti.com/download/aap/pdf/1394_featured_products.pdf
Putting a TSBxxxxxx FW chipset on a PCIe card would indeed be just as efficient as putting a regular PCI card in a 6/7/8 series motherboard as both solutions would involve a PCI-to-PCIe bridge.
Regarding the LSI/Agere FW643 chipset mentioned above, note that there seem to be some issues with earlier revision (prior to Rev 7 aka FW643e).
One more topic I'd like to highlight is which PCIe slot to use, as a lot of people seem to suggest trying out different PCIe slots when having issues with audio. Note that some PCIe slots are connected directly to the CPU while others are connected to the motherboard chipset (e.g. Z87). The PCIe slots connected to the motherboard chipset will compete for I/O with other devices (SATA disks, USB devices, LAN network...). Needless to say is that the PCIe slots connected directly to the CPU are to be prefered if low latency is important to you.
I'm planning to buy a FW800 PCIe card as this is more future proof. As most firewire audio card manufacturers still seem to prefer/recommend Texas Instruments chipsets, I'm going to look for PCIe card with a TI XIO2213 chipset. (Alternatively you could opt for a PCIe card with a FW643 Rev 7 chipset (aka FW643e chipset))
I did find some cards from various vendors which use this chipset (e.g. Dawicontrol DC-FW800 PCIe, DeLock/Tragant 89210, Digitus DS-30203, ExSys EX-16415 / EX-16415-L, FireWire Direct NAVPCIEFW800 / NAVPCIEFW8002X / NAVPCIESATFW, SIIG NN-E38012-S3, Sonnet FW800-E, Vantec UGT-FW210...).
If I can find one reasonably priced, I'd probably go for the SIIG or the ExSys card... I'll let you know the outcome...
Hope this helps to shed some light on this complex matter... Any feedback or experience with the above would be highly appreciated.
