Firewire cards

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I had some issues with Firewire card I got for a new PC build. It was difficult to find cards that stated support for Windows 7 64. I ended up going with a Lacie 3 port Firewire 800 express card because its Windows 7 support, Lacie name, and good reviews.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/745529-REG/LaCie_130988_3_Port_Firewire_800_PCI.html

1. In order to get it to work I had had to contact Lacie customer support, they told me to set it to Legacy in the device manager.

2. Once set to Legacy it worked normally still performed slower than USB2. I researched another fix, turning off the cache of the external hard drive that finally got it to perform like it should.

3. While the card has 3 ports, I discovered that when capturing video in Premiere, an external hard drive will be recognized until the camera is removed. I like the ability to capture directly to an external drive for clients to save time of the extra step of copying.

Are these issues common for the PC or should I send this card back for another?

[Randall Leong]

These issues are common for PCI-e Firewire cards in general. I had a Firewire 800 card (LSI chipset instead of the TI chipset) that also had issues with my current i7-2600K system. It prevented me from achieving a stable overclock past 4.1GHz (above that speed, the system would not even POST at all). I removed that card, and I now get overclocks on that CPU to 4.8GHz (however, I had to back off to 4.5GHz due to heat issues).

If your PC has a legacy PCI slot, then try to find a legacy PCI card that uses a TI chipset. Unfortunately, those cards are becoming increasingly rare. In fact, nearly all of the PCI Firewire cards that I could find locally use the cheapo VIA chipset that's very sluggish in write performance (much slower than even USB 2.0, let alone other implementations of Firewire 400). The cheapo VIA chipset is like the one that's on my system's Asus P8P67 PRO motherboard.

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Pete Cofrancesco

I had some issues with Firewire card I got for a new PC build. It was difficult to find cards that stated support for Windows 7 64. I ended up going with a Lacie 3 port Firewire 800 express card because its Windows 7 support, Lacie name, and good reviews.
LaCie 3-Port Firewire 800 PCI Express Card 130988 B&H Photo


1. In order to get it to work I had had to contact Lacie customer support, they told me to set it to Legacy in the device manager.

2. Once set to Legacy it worked normally still performed slower than USB2. I researched another fix, turning off the cache of the external hard drive that finally got it to perform like it should.

3. While the card has 3 ports, I discovered that when capturing video in Premiere, an external hard drive will be recognized until the camera is removed. I like the ability to capture directly to an external drive for clients to save time of the extra step of copying.

Are these issues common for the PC or should I send this card back for another?

I was having all sorts of problems with saturating the Firewire BUSS trying to do live switching with HDV cameras. I bought several cards and kept having problems. I ran across NitroAV and was a bit put off at first on the cost but ended up buying their dual-controller card. It worked with Win7 64bit right away and all my problems with bandwidth stopped.

Verge Labs Inc. (NitroAV.com) :: Host Bus Adapters - SAS | eSATA | FireWire 800 | USB 3.0

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

I was having all sorts of problems with saturating the Firewire BUSS trying to do live switching with HDV cameras. I bought several cards and kept having problems. I ran across NitroAV and was a bit put off at first on the cost but ended up buying their dual-controller card. It worked with Win7 64bit right away and all my problems with bandwidth stopped.

Verge Labs Inc. (NitroAV.com) :: Host Bus Adapters - SAS | eSATA | FireWire 800 | USB 3.0

Did you buy the $69 or $99 variety?

[Chris Medico]

I got the $99 one.