# F2a55-M/M11BB/DP_MB Firewire



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

Hi...I'm a newbie here so bear with me a little....

I just bought an ASUS PC which has this motherboard inside it. \now to be honest I bought it in a real rush as the old one died and I needed something delivered straight away...

My daughter tried to import her video from her camcorder to the PC,,,well...she would have if I had bought a PC with a Firewire card installed. (DUHR!!!)

The mobo has one PCI slot , but that is taken up by the graphics card.

From trawling the net, I have spotted that it has a PCIe 2 16 and a PCIe 1 slot.

They are empty, can I just buy a PCIe Firewire card (it's the mini card thing isn't it ??)

Also, what is the difference between the two PCIe slots..... 1 and 2

Many thanks for reading and helping me.


----------



## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

Are you sure the Video card is in the PCI slot?
Modern video cards are PCIe x16.

The PCIe x16 slot is longer and has 16 times the connections as a x1 slot.

Is the case a standard mini tower or a slim tower?
Slim towers or small form factor PC's need to have low profile(AKA half height) cards.


----------



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

Wrench97 said:


> Are you sure the Video card is in the PCI slot?
> Modern video cards are PCIe x16.
> 
> The PCIe x16 slot is longer and has 16 times the connections as a x1 slot.
> ...


----------



## gcavan (Aug 13, 2009)

You could use either. The black x16 slot actually runs at x4 bandwidth. Most 1394 cards I've seen have an x1 sized card edge, though they may be mounted in an x1, x4, x8 or x16 slot.


----------



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

Many Thanks once more....

I think its time to get online again and buy the card. One for the black slot looks favourite even if there probably isn't much performance difference....

I' m just glad I can get a firewire card and keep said daughter happy...

Thanks again

Dave


----------



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

I'm looking on Ebay, the connectors are tiny - is that because they only need to access a small amount of the interface (i'm not V techy guys - soz)

StarTech 3 + 1 Internal Port PCI Express FireWire Adaptor Card PEX13943 - Fire | eBay

this is just a solitary example - hope its ok to post a link.


----------



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

or....there's loads of PCI Firewire cards at much cheaper.......er.....whats all the difference please ....Thx


----------



## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

Yes that's a PCIe x1 card, it will fit in the x1 slot or the x16 slot.
The feature set of PCIe is that connections are the same a PCIe card fits into a slot of its physical size or larger up to ×16 but may not fit into a smaller PCIe slot for example a ×16 card will not fit in a ×8 slot.


----------



## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

daveb3650 said:


> or....there's loads of PCI Firewire cards at much cheaper.......er.....whats all the difference please ....Thx



Speed


----------



## gcavan (Aug 13, 2009)

There will actually be no perf difference. You're basically correct, a single device would not saturate an x1 pipe, though several devices trying to move data at once may.

Firewire IEEE - 1394 Cards | Ebuyer.com


----------



## daveb3650 (Nov 11, 2013)

It's a bit tricky trying to make sure I source one that works on Windows 8.1

There are lots marked Windows 7 compatible.......not for 8 tho..


----------

