Why is Oxford firewire chipset better?

Greetings,

I have read that if I buy an external 5.25" firewire
enclosure, it is important that the enclosure uses
the Oxford 911 chipset. Can somebody tell me why the
that chipset is more important? Is that the only
one that Linux knows about? Or are there benchmarks
that show it is faster under Windows?

Thank you.

Yibbels