I'll stick with Turtle Beach or M-Audio cards.

maybe, a PCI express version of Audigy 2 ?

Creative are getting there I think. The Audigy 2 & 2 ZS are the best gaming Soundcards out there & I've owned & reviewed many of them. The only things they need to do at the moment is ditch AC 97 compliance - I want a resampling free Soundcard like the Envy 24 chipset(s). No more resampling to 48kHz with a 44.1kHz or lower source, or because you are using the effects engine. Similarly they need to cut down on the number of Soundcards they release. It's just a waste releasing 2 or 3 soundcards that differ only by software bundle. There should be just 1 standard Soundcard & the 1 standard "platinum" model with the external drive. The Drivers while I've never really had real problems with them they need to just release integrated ones now, officially. I can several places pointing out how to run the Drivers on earlier Soundcards, so just do it. Release 1 Drivers that supports the entire Audigy range, as the guides are out there showing you can do it already. The control panel software is fine now, the audigy 2 zs gives you control over pretty much everything you could want, so not much need for anything new there.

Except the drivers are still buggy as hell. For example, they always "forget" some of my speaker calibration settings, I have to re-calibrate them all the time. Also, in the THX console, I set my middle speaker to "above monitor" and it ALWAYS reverts back to "below monitor" the next time I use it. How can they ignore such simple bugs, after so many updates?