[Cableaddict]

I'll be upgrading both my main PC and my audio system soon.

I'll be using a Lynx Aurora(n), but I'm a bit puzzled by current connection options. I know that Dante is ridiculously expensive (due to licensing issues?) plus it currently has latency issues. So my two choices are Thunderbolt, or staying with PCIe

With audio, I see that PCIe cards are pretty much going the way of the Flintstones, with Thunderbolt-equipped mobos starting to be standard. therefore, I'll probably go that way, but I'd REALLY like to understand more. I've read countless articles, but I have yet to find one that fills me with confidence.
I trust some of the computer gurus here more than on most other forums.

SO, MY QUESTIONS:
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1: Does Thunderbolt have the potential to offer lower DAW latency than even a PCIe card?

I read something, rather badly explained, about how TB uses DMA so that the audio goes straight to & from your ram, thus creating no cpu overhead. That's sounds tasty to me, but is that also the case with PCIe cards, or not?


2: If using a PCIe Thunderbolt adapter card, with my current non-TB motherboard, should I expect LESSER performance, vs a mobo with built-in TB-3?


3: Do all TB3-equipped motherboards offer the exact same TB performance?

I ask because I read something (again, very badly explained) about how some TB implementations use some kind of controller chip, whereas the "real thing" has a more direct path to the promised land.

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### LAST: Do any gains that might happen exist because the system will allow for a smaller hardware buffer, or are those gains created elsewhere? (With the buffer size still determined by cpu speed, driver design, etc)