Are PCI soundboards worth it anymore?

My computer is my complete home entertainment / creativity / work station. Along with games, movies and internet, I want to use my computer to record music. Looking at soundboards on the internet, none of them are reviewed for high fidelity recording. Does anybody know if pci soundcards are worth it anymore or are most high-end MOBOs capable of doing the job?

I believe they are still needed if you want a million sound effects coming out of the speakers at once. Like Battlefield games and hearing all gun shots and explosions currently happening around you.

May be needed too if EAX is still around and you want the best possible sound from a game. Personally, I have not used one in a few years and just use USB virtual surround sound headphones because it would too loud for others in the house.

I don't even know if windows has hardware acceleration available to sound anymore? Ever since Vista I think sound cards have been useless since all the processing gets done on the CPU and I think the post processing parts get done of the board (like reverb and such). So they don't really make sense to use anymore.

Please somebody correct me if I'm wrong.