Aren't Matrox cards supposed to be installed ONLY after the windows install is complete?
Otherwise it will pick up the firewire on the card as a standard firewire jack (which it is not). true?
Or is the version of cards without the extra firewire?

Not directly related and just FYI:

I certainly haven't had an issue with my old AIW R8500 DV, which also featured two FW ports (which was quite an innovation back in the day when most PC users hadn't heared of FW before).

Thankfully, they appear to be standard jacks (6 pins) and you can also selectively disable them on the board with DIP switches.