ASUS' Republic of Gamers motherboards have sported a PCI Express 1x 'SupremeFX' card for some time now, but the Maximus II Formula sees something of an overhaul in this department, being as it is the first to feature SupremeFX X-Fi functionality.

Now, this particular branding might lead you to believe that this offering sports Creative's X-Fi processor... But you'd be wrong. What we actually have here is, in fact, an early supporter of Creative's new SoundBlaster X-Fi MB technology, which in essence uses the hardware codec of another audio processor (in this case Analog Devices' AD1988B chip) coupled with software CPU utilisation to offer up much of the functionality of Creative's current X-Fi sound cards. This means that you get access to EAX functionality up to EAX 4.0 (meaning no EAX 5.0 support), as well as other features such as 3D CMSS and Crystalizer for improving sound quality.