E6400 Firewire questions

For my Dell Latitude E6400, how do I find out:

1. Which FW chipset exists?
2. Is it FW400 or FW800 or something else?

Also, are any of you guys using your E6400 for pro audio facing any issues with say, an external soundcard?

Thanks.

 

I have a E6500, but I'm positive the E6400 is identical in regards to the Firewire support. Device Manager shows it as a Ricoh chipset, even though the specifications for some of my gear prefers TI (Texas Instruments). It is only FW400. (I've not seen any mainstream PC laptops with FW800.)

I use it for pro audio, specifically with the MOTU line of multi-channel audio interfaces. I haven't observed any issues specific to the firewire. However, there have been issues in regards to various drivers and applications causing DPC latency / CPU spikes that could sometimes cause dropouts. (See http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=341918 .) Just pay attention to the drivers that you're installing, and you should be fine. In particular, install the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) drivers directly from Intel, for best results.

 

I've got an E6400 with Win 7 x64 & have no probs at all using my Echo Audiofire 2 @ 10 ms latency.