Yeah, when Vista came out it basically killed off sound cards as a mainstream product, both because of the new way the system interacted with the sound card and because of the big increase on CPU (and even GPU) requirements.
But once Windows 8 came out in 2012, x64 finally became standard, and seems sound card manufacturers wanted to give one last hurrah by optimizing their drivers for Windows 8 (which makes them compatible with Win 10 & 11 almost by default).
Now, the sound industry is still pretty much dead to anyone who isn’t an audiophile. But i’m happy to say that they are still products that can enhance your audio, production and gaming experience if you know how to use them. :)
But basically, just as it has been since the dawn of PC Gaming, it’s a case by case scenario.
However!
If you are dealing with intensive, single thread tasks (AKA Emulating PS2 and higher, or video rendering), you should get a noticeble increase on performance due to the CPU being relegated of audio-related tasks.
And finally, 99.9% of PC users don’t need an output higher than 48Khz, 16-Bit. So if you aren’t the exception, put your settings around those numbers to enjoy a bit of extra performance.