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. :)