sanse

it gives food to a lot of discussion on these x-fi cards. i can only add something about my experience:

my present rig is based on a gigabyte microatx-board and the x-fi xtreme music card i had with my previous rig did not want to co-exist with this gigabyte board. weird messages during install of the drivers and crackling sound (if it worked). it worked fine however with the asus fullsize atx-board in my previous rig. with the same drivers...

so i bought a x-fi xtreme gamer (half height) card and that one installed and functions fine. both under xp x86 as well as vista x64. no idea why the fullsize xtreme music card didn't.

and the x-fi drivers coexist peacefully besides the realtek sound drivers. both under xp x86 as well as vista x64.