Mettelus: your board has a IEEE 1394
VIA® 6308P controller
2 x IEEE 1394a port(s)
(1 at mid-board, 1 at back panel).......VIA firewire chipset..and it might work,but for 0 error  best  performance a Ti chipset firewire card is in order ....if you install another card please turn off in bios the onboard firewire 1st

I struggled over the Safire and Scarlett USB. I went with the Scarlett because there is not a laptop out there with firewire port now a days. The USB works great on Win 7 64bit.

Pro 40 here. It totally lives up to expectations.

I have Pro 40 and my friend has Pro56. Great sound, very solid, but we never got to grips with the Mix control. It's a night school course on it's own.

Mix control takes a couple of hours education and day session to get used to. You must need to read the documentation and watch the videos focusrite and YouTube provides. It's an excellent tool once you understand it... 

Your FireWire chipset should be fine.... I doubt an external card is needed (I use my internal FireWire interface).
http://global.focusrite.c...ible-with-my-interface
 

If going for an internal FW card make sure it's PCIe. Modern motherboards with PCI slots treat them as poorly implemented legacy devices. They often cause more problems than they fix.

StarTekh
Mettelus: your board has a IEEE 1394
VIA® 6308P controller
2 x IEEE 1394a port(s)
(1 at mid-board, 1 at back panel).......VIA firewire chipset..and it might work,but for 0 error  best  performance a Ti chipset firewire card is in order ....if you install another card please turn off in bios the onboard firewire 1st

Vastman
I have the DSP version and love it.  However, I did find it worked much better with a TI firewire card (about $15 from newegg) as my asus motherboard had a via chipset and I struggled with periodic dropouts till I upgraded to a TI card.

mudgel
If going for an internal FW card make sure it's PCIe. Modern motherboards with PCI slots treat them as poorly implemented legacy devices. They often cause more problems than they fix.

Thanks all for the responses! And yes, I know I posted in the wrong spot (I never claimed to be intelligent).
 
Yup, the external FW connector on the motherboard and is listed as "VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller" and the driver is MS and from 2006 (6.1.7601.17514). The external is a "6-pin" though, but the above suggestions I need to look into next. My graphics card is the ASUS model which covers two slots below it so checking the MB manual quick.... the PCI2 and the PCIEX16-3 slot are still usable (I think). I just jumped on Newegg to look and do not see a quick way to sort the TI chipset. I opened one and the details even said VIA. Is there a quick way to search these?
 
The only other thing that comes to mind with the Saffire Pro 24 is that I would then still be using my Ozone as a MIDI controller, so would this force me into WDM mode at that point?
 
 

Hmmm, if I use Google first, then drill into Newegg hits, it find them... products like these that "Feature TI chipset"?
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124107&Tpk=N82E16815124107

The Via chipset in newer MOBOs is well reported on so I'd give it a try. If there's a problem then buy a FireWire card. Also don't buy a combo FireWire USB card.