It surprised me as an Alesis IO26 and the Saffire Pro 40 wouldn't even connect to anything other than the T.I. controller. Back in the Vista days the Firewire port (controller) I had was built into a SoundBlaster interface unit and the IO26 wouldn't connect at all with whatever was in the SoundBlaster (it was not identified). I bought the Saffire Pro 40 as I needed more analog channels and it was the same way, it wouldn't connect (that was with an old Dell Dimension E510). I built a new PC with an Intel DP35DP board that had the T.I. chipset and both units worked OK. When I built the PC I have now, I went with a USB interface unit since it didn't have a T.I. chipset (and the Saffire Pro 40 had hardware problems).
Both the IO26 and the Saffire Pro 40 use DICE (the Saffire Pro 40 uses a DICE II) Firewire chipsets, I haven't seen any info on what is in the MOTU.
I'll go back to using USB 2.0 but at least I know I could use Firewire if needed, and not everything "must have" a T.I. chipset port in the PC.