X-Fi functionality on ANY Realtek HDA Codec!

[ToTTenTranz]

Theres no emulation taking place AFAIK, which means the Realtek chip can do it AFAIK all the way up to EAX 4.0 anyway its all software doing the job, EAX 5 is hardware with a X-Fi.

EMU20K1 and EMU20K2 (X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium except for XtremeAudio, notebook and USB versions): Accelerates all EAX versions through hardware.
EMU10K2 (Audigy 1 and 2, except for SE, Value, LS and notebook/USB versions): Accelerates EAX 4.0 and inferior through hardware.
EMU10K1 (Live! except for "24 bit" version) and nVidia Soundstorm: Accelerates EAX 1.0 and 2.0 through hardware.

Everything else does any EAX version through the CPU. There's no DSP functionality in realtek's codecs or in (your beloved) Xonar's rebranded CMI8788 from C-Media, because they're just simple codecs.


Having the CPU to emulate EAX 4.0 is heavy. I know this because I'm using a X-Fi Surround 5.1 USB card (non-eax capable hardware), and turning on EAX 4.0 or emulating OpenAL hardware will give me better surround sound, but it will also lower my framerate in newer games, because my C2D T7200 2.0Ghz gets overloaded.
With a quad-core or a 3+Ghz dual-core I don't think this would happen, though.

Vote with your feet, buy a Xonar

Buy a Xonar ZERO problems with drivers nomatter the OS your using

Giving it away is too good for a X-Fi... should of smashed it into a million bits with a sledgehammer, then blowtorched it, then attached a post-it note to it reading "I sincerely hope the company go the way of this soundcard" and posted it to crapative

Blatant advertising and any anti-company cheap trolling is forbidden in this forum. Reported.