PCI X Firewire

andreklc · #1 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005, 03:37 PM

My motherboard don´t have a firewire connection, so i´m planning to buy a 3 firewire connector plugged to the motherboard by the PCI bus. Will I be able to use the maximum speed of the 3 firewire connections at the same time??

Alan Mills · #2 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005, 08:18 PM

Dunno but you're certainly doing the right thing. Firewire ports on Mobos and graphics card tend to 'play up' for video capture.

I don't mean to tar them all with the same brush but we've encountered many an occasion when switching to a PCI firewire port has solved capture problems.

Ian in Northampton · #3 (**permalink**) 03-03-2005, 08:13 AM

Just out of interest, why would you want to use all three at the same time? Surely you're not planning to capture video from three sources concurrently...?

Mike Thorpe · #4 (**permalink**) 03-03-2005, 08:21 AM

Hard drives?

Ian in Northampton · #5 (**permalink**) 03-03-2005, 08:39 AM

Mike: yes, of course. But what I was trying to calibrate was where the botleneck might be. In theory, there's no reason why you couldn't get maximum throughput on all three Firewire channels at once - the difficulty is more likely to be at the CPU/memory/disk end with trying to process it all. It seems to me - based on no knowledge of the facts at all - that it would be theoretically possible to get maximum throughput on each connection, but probably not at the same time. But it depends on your definition of 'at the same time'. You could have your Firewire disk capable of full rate transfer, your video download at full rate transfer and let's say you had a 1394 MP3 player downloading tracks: each would be separately capable of full speed transfer, but I'm not sure you could run all three at the same time. It would all depend on the application and the power/capacity of the host.

I can't believe I just wrote so much about something about which know nothing.

Er... Yes I Can. :lol: