and somehow he didn't think that PCI was faster.

And how did he expect the computer to use a fast interface when every implementation of firewire controllers on computers has been via the PCI bus somehow? (Or AGP with the ATI card)

He was probably mislead by the whole megabyte and bit problem. I have always seen PCI numbers in megabyte, and firewire as megabit. And lets see:

Megabyte:
Hard drives
AGP

Megabit:
Networks
USB
Fibre

Internal firewire has always puzzled me. Sure it would be ok for a hard drive, but start introducing two or three fast ones and the limit of the current spec is hit. SCSI is about to hit 320MBps, only because some Ultra 160 drives when operated off an array can tax the bus.

Oh, and PCIX has speeds of 50mhz and 100mhz as well, but I couldn't remember the bandwith calculation. PCIX had some other nice features, but I can't remember what they were.