Ok, so I decided to do some homework on this subject.
Last month, Gigabyte launched something called X-Fi MB.
This is a software suite, developed by Creative, that enables software emulation of some of Creative's exclusive features in conjunction with a realtek codec.
This software suite isn't new. Creative has made EAX 4.0 and 2nd gen CMSS-3D available to non-EMUx0Kxx (the first being EMU10K1 from SB Live!) cards for quite a while now.
The first card to support it was the Audigy SE, a Creative card with a simple CA-0106 codec, but supported all the Audigy's features through software emulation.
My own laptop, Inspiron 9400, had the Audigy Advanced MB as a software upgrade option, and it has a Sigmatel STAC9200 stereo codec.
The only difference between Audigy Advanced MB and X-FI MB is the Crystalizer, which started as a hardware feature for EMU20K1 cards, but was later dumbed down to fit mp3 players and non-EMU20K1 cards.
The X-Fi MB in Gigabyte's website consists of:
- Altered realtek drivers, with the driver GUI changed so it looks like an X-Fi (for free, Vista-only), but they're still pretty much realtek's drivers;
- Creative's own X-Fi MB software suite (30-day trial).
What the modder did was to change the gigabyte/realtek driver to bypass the hardware ID verification and install in any Realtek Azalia codec in Vista/XP. Kudos for that, but its usefulness is quite questionable, as I'll explain later.
The problem is, while in Creative (EMUxKxx or not) cards the driver itself enables Crystalizer, Alchemy, CMSS and EAX4, in the "MB" versions it's the software suite that enables this feature.
So unless the software suite is installed, having this driver is as usefull as.. well as nothing, really..
Some people in the techpowerup forums (I counted 3) are claiming better analog quality.. This is either placebo or they were using old-as-hell and faulty realtek drivers to start with. It's like saying I modded my X1900XT driver to support shader model 4..
No software update provides better analog output. Anyone with a little knowledge on digital signal processing and D/A conversion knows this. After the sound stream has passed to the analog dimension, there's nothing the software can do.
If the codec, the DAC and the digital sound source is the same, the quality of the analog output is.. the same.
What they could have experienced was a different pre-equalization in the driver, something they could have tweaked from the start with their old driver. However if both drivers are in "flat" mode, the sound will be the same.
Judging from the techpowerup thread, not everyone has successfully installed this modded driver. Within those who did, not everyone could install the software suite, rendering the modded driver completely useless. Unless you like Creative's driver GUI, of course.
So this is just that, an interesting mod that works on some (very few, apparently) non-Gigabyte realtek codecs. However, its usability only works during the 30-day trial (assuming all the features work at all, which has not been proved so far), or more if you decide to pay $30 for it. But with $30 you can buy an XtremeAudio, which does exactly the same but should have better analog connections.
A techpowerup user tried to explain this in the original thread, but he was trolled to death (ironically being called a troll himself). I guess the techpowerup's "hive mind" is so eager to finding impossible modding miracles (like turning their crappy realtek onboard codec with 2 million transistors into a full-fledged X-Fi with 50 million transistors) that they chose to flame the first person with a reasonable opinion on the matter.
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can you please modd the P5Q sound driver from Asus Website? cause the original realtek drivers
Originally Posted by B.E.E.F.
ZERO problems with drivers nomatter the OS your using 
I deffinately didn't do it, so how it passed QC I don't know. All is now well though 
qft!
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