Without the driver, Firewire DMA is not enabled, so yes, it does matter. It is mentioned in the article. Lion even disables Firewire DMA when the screen is loc

Without the driver, Firewire DMA is not enabled, so yes, it does matter. It is mentioned in the article. Lion even disables Firewire DMA when the screen is locked if you are running Filevault, or if you have an EFI password.