What they did with this card was get a lower quality, and poorly supported chip and stick the X-Fi label on it. It's not a good card.
Drivers are dodgy and completely non existent for Linux. The sound is OK, but not noticeably better than what you would get from an Audigy SE or something. It certainly isn't 'X-Fi' standard.
The only 'advantage' I can think of is that it is PCI-E. Not that it improves performance or anything, but if you only have a spare PCI-E slot and need a cheapish sound card this might be your only option. In all other scenarios, avoid it.
Oh, and you don't need the evil Creative propriety header to connect it to the front jacks.
