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I just finished a new build based on the Asus Rampage IV Gene board, which has SupremeFX onboard audio. There are three different driver configurations I can use:

1) the HD Audio driver built into Windows
2) Realtek audio driver
3) Realtek audio driver + Xfi MB2 software

I can't hear any difference between the three drivers on my Swan M10 speakers. Does X-Fi MB2 do anything other than provide an optional equalizer and fake surround? Can it somehow lower CPU usage in games and other applications that use audio?

If you just use a single set of stereo speakers and you do not need a fake surround - use the generic drivers that Windows installed. There are no performance advantages of using Creative's software with this motherboard.

In my experience, the only time all that extra software helped was on a notebook with crappy audio.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. You can do whatever the f*** you wanna do.

I install the latest Realtek drivers, downloaded directly from Realtek not whatever outdated version the motherboard manufacturer has on their site, because it's a useful control panel that's better than the Windows control panel and does add a few feature options. I can't comment on the software-based XFi implementation from Asus but unless it has specific features you know you'll use I wouldn't bother with it.

Sometimes I actually prefer the default Windows drivers.
They have auto normalize for volume, which has saved my ears a bunch of times when watching youtube.

I uninstalled the X-Fi software and went with the latest realtek drivers. Thanks for all of the input guys.