Why is PCI Express better than PCI?? Oh, let me count the ways...

1. PCI bus SHARES it's bandwidth not only with other PCI slots, but also numerous other devices on the motherboard (this of course does vary by motherboard)
2. PCI bus maximum bandwidth is 132MB/s... sounds like enough... but things can get crowded really quick when you find out everything else that is sharing the same bus (drive controllers, LAN, USB, etc.)
3. PCI Express slots are NOT shared bandwidth
4. PCI Express slots have a maximum of 500MB/s bandwidth PER LANE (a PCI Express x16 video card uses 16 lanes!)

To summarize... 132MB/s shared vs 500MB/s dedicated... that's a no brainer.

I switched from PCI to PCI Express Firewire card, and saw a dramatic improvement in my Firepod performance in terms of lowest achievable latency.

hounDAWg

Desperate,

I have a FF400 and just installed the LaCie FW800 card in my PC. I didn't notice any positive performance gain with Sonar PE6.2 as apposed to the onboard Asus FW (TI chipset). There was virtually no improvement in latency times. I'm wondering if I should return the LaCie and try a PCIe card.

Cheers,
Greg

Jose7822,

Please understand my statement... PCIe vs PCI made a difference in MY system... no guarantees with another system because there are too many variables. However, rest assured that the PCIe bus is a vastly superior bus to PCI -- mainly because each lane doesn't share its bandwidth.

As for a PCIe x4 FW card, I personally haven't seen any, and doubt that we ever will -- that would be a complete waste of resources. PCIe x1 is MORE than sufficient to handle Firewire 400. Here's why...

Max Firewire bandwidth = 400Mb/s (or 50MB/s)
Max PCIe x1 bandwitdth = 500MB/s

Notice the lowercase 'b' in the Firewire spec, it means "bits" not bytes. 400 megabit per second translates to 50 megabyts (MB) per second.
By contrast, note the capital 'B' in the PCIe spec, it means "bytes" (8 bits = 1 byte).

Therefore 1 lane of PCI Express (or PCIe x1) has a theoretical bandwidth limit of 10 TIMES that of Firewire 400... like I said, should be no problem.

hounDAWg

Jose,

Yes, absolutely debating/torn over which interface will be my next one -- and it will need to last me for quite a while so I need to be certain about the purchase. I've turned MANY people onto RME interfaces (mostly FF800) over the years -- EVERY one of them has thanked me for it. The FF800 is just too far out of my price range, and the FF400 seems like a good alternative.

For the record, I got my current Firepod for almost nothing. Sound/performance has been pretty good... lot's of issues with Presonus' support of this product -- can't hardly wait to kick it to the curb.

Here's my current dilema, probably like yours: Firewire vs PCI (or PCIe) ... RME vs Lynx. What to do? My chief concerns are (1) rock solid driver stability/performance (2) quality of A/D and D/A converters (3) Lowest latency performance (4) Manufacturer's support. RME and Lynx both excel at these.

The Lynx stuff may be out of my price range as well. So, if RME then, I may wait until their new PCI Express card becomes available and pair it with a Multiface II -- maybe. I still have the thought that maybe a FF400 will be "good enough" on a PCI Express Firewire controller... decisions, decisions, more research.

I've also considered the new and very attractively priced/featured Focusrite Saffire Pro. On paper, looks outstanding, just not totally convinced they can deliver and offer continued support of high quality drivers like Lynx and RME.

ANY advice/experiences/comments appreciated.

hounDAWg

Not sure when the RME PCIe card is coming out. Just saw it announced at RME booth at NAMM. I've asked a few retailers but haven't gotten an ETA.

As for the converters... it is my understanding that this particular new PCIe interface card does not have converters on it (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), but it is meant to be paired with either the MultiFace II or DigiFace products. The PCIe card simply provides a connection to one of those breakout boxes... using a Firewire cable. But, RME is quick to point out, that this is NOT Firewire protocol, but their own proprietary and much superior interface to Firewire.

hounDAWg

I found it here if you wanna know the ETA for each card: http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=4047
Its almost at the bottom of the page.

Looks like a bit of confusion as to what a "firewire card" is.

I believe this thread is discussing PCI based IEEE 1394 cards,
not the audio interface that connects to them.

Yeah, he got corrected in the first page (5th post).

It has been my experience that most of these cards use Native Windows Firewire drivers. In other words, install the card, Windows recognizes it and installs an appropriate driver. A real example of "plug and play" in action. Works great for me on Windows XP Pro SP2 and with Windows XP Pro x64. Haven't tried Vista yet...

hounDAWg

Ok dilema, I only have1 PCI express slot, occupied by my video card. Don't really care about the video card, so I will probably switch it. If I get a PCI video card, is that gonna slow down the machine any?

What about PCI cards for a triple interface hard drive for sample storage? I use all 3 generations of the Maxtor One Touch series plugged into my system at once and the third generation supports Firewire 800. Right now all three devices are running USB 2.0 and it is simply not working well enough. Since two of the drives only support Firewire 400 or USB 2.0, I'm most interested in a combo card.

Independent benchmarks with this specific hard drive by various online journals have shown significant performance increases by going with Firewire 800 over the other two options. My motherboard does not support PCI Express. What card(s) do you reccomend?