hmm... squalish, different soundcards have different purposes, so u can't really say that one is the best without specifying what u'll be using it for. few gamers who use 4.1, 5.1, or headphone setups will need 7.1 decoding, but those with 7.1 speakers wouldn't be able to live without a 7.1 soundcard, ne? on a more audio-relevant level, some cards offer awesome sound processing power for gaming (sb audigy), but can't really give u anything near reference-quality sound for music-listening... and trust me on that, the audigy sound is worse than the line-out from my pcdp...
******* me for having fallen for the creative marketing ploys!! but the audigy is great for gaming...
anyway, to the friendly n00b big E, another soundcard u should look at is the terratec aureon 5.1 fun or the aureon 5.1 sky. the older terratec line, the dmx6 fire, is well-respected as having clean, hi-fi sound, and if this aureon lives up to its expectations with true 24bit/96khz processing and such, it will be an awesome card to hear!
since it's a pretty new product, i haven't read many reviews on it (plus with all the attention getting focused on the sb audigy 2). however, given terratec's good name, i'm thinking this is my next soundcard...
http://www.terratec.com/ttus/default.htm