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Firewire: does it really matter?

N

NeoHC421

Senior member
I'm in the market to get a firewire card to transfer some digital video to my computer. MY question is, does the firewire card I select matter at all? If I get a cheapo 20 dollar card vs. a 50-100 card, will i get anything hardware better? (I already have good software) Is there any effect on quality, speed, etc? any advice would be appreciated. thanks in advance.
 
I am not an expert, but my bro-inlaw is an ASIC design engineer at a major computer co and I asked him about firewire since he works on FW and USB chips.

He said that there were problems with the standard not being set early on and some mfgs just did their chip they way they thought it should be (Sony) and so while most things are compatible, some things are more compatible than others.

I hear the TI chipset is really good, but I recomend you do your homework.

I saw a review of some FW CDRW drives and they had serious compatiblity issues with some interface cards.

I am looking for a FW CDRW drive so I am still kind of learning about the stuff...
 
I got a D-Link 3-port card, it has the TI chipset and it's worked perfectly for me. It came with a cable and some ULead software and was only $50.
 
ok, well basically i was looking on the newegg site, and i saw a cheapo fw card for bout 20 with shipping... going down the list, there's some cards going for 50 + shipping, but those come w/ software... I just don't wanna be payin for stuff i don't need.
In short, which card should i buy to get the most of my cash?
(I need one soon, so any advice is welcome.)
 
I bought a $20 Inland branded Firewire card from Microcenter a while back. It was a TI chip, WinXP recognized and automatically installed it, and I've been converting MiniDV footage off my Sharp Viewcam to DivX ever since. I didn't know it back when I bought it, but it seems that the TI chip is pretty well regarded. Guess I lucked out...
 
Chances are, even if the firewire transfer rate isn't up to snuff, it'll still beat the tar out of your hard drives transfer rate, so I say go budget unless you have problems (or find a deal on a combo usb2.0/firewire card).,
 
As long as the card is OHCI compliant you should be good to hook. Also, make sure that the Firewire card is compatible w/whatever editing/capture software you'll be using (usually the software's website will have detials on this).


Lethal
 
When I was in the market for a FW card, the one thing that was emphasized the most was make sure it had a TI chip. The card I got when I purchased StudioDV had a TI chip and "OHCI Compliant". It's been flawless ever since I installed it over a year ago.
 
The cheap card at newegg (about $20) has a TI chip on it (newegg states this on their webpage)
I have used it to xfer DV many times and winxp supports it out of the box.
Unless you need the software, go with the cheap card from newegg.
 
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