Graphic cards would probably end up with the same fate as soundcards someday.

Haha, no way. GPUs are not going to disappear anytime soon, if ever. By the time 16 core CPUs are available (in a couple of years, latest), GPUs will have advanced too. In fact, if you compare GPU and CPU performance increases over the last few years, i think you will see that the latter has improved faster. Thing is, GPUs are purpose built for massively parallel processing, while CPUs are still largely dependent on single thread performance. They are attacking different problems. GPUs also have a lot of specialized hardware for texture filtering and other fixed function operations which would take forever for a CPU to do. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say multi-core CPUs = death of GPUs. That's just daft.

Back to the soundcard issue, just as with GPUs, if you want something good or at least better than average, you always have to go with a discreet solution. And right now if you listen to music and game, x-fi is the only way to go. CPUs alone won't cut it. EAX really does work well on new creative cards.