If you've purchased a new high powered PC lately, you may have been surprised like I was to find that PCI slots are now a thing of the past. My ZT PC has only PCIe slots (1x, 4x, 2 x 16x) and no firewire. I added a PCIe firewire/usb card and then started looking for appropriate sound cards. Not many out there. I contacted Cakewalk, they haven't updated their compatible sound card hardware list since mid-2011. After several searches I found and ordered the esp1010e, which is an improved version (both hardware and software) of the esp1010 (which was PCI). It has a nice breakout rackmouted analog interface, reports to have latency as low as 1-5 ms (not sure how many tracks that was running), 8 ins and outs, 2 headphone outs, 2 midi in and outs, plus a very good internal software system for routing all the connections, and ASIO of course. I should have it by next week and after installing and testing, I'll report back here to let users know how well it performs. With the i7-2600 chip (8 x 3.4 mhz processors) and 16GB RAM, hopefully it will run like a champ. http://www.esi-audio.com/products/esp1010e/

Not many PCIe sound cards out there? Here's a list of the ones sold by Sweetwater:

E-Mu 1212M PCIe
E-Mu 0404 PCIe
MOTU 24I/O PCIe
Apogee Symphony 64 PCIe
MOTU 2408 CORE Mk III PCIe
Lynx AES16e PCIe
RME HDSPe AIO PCIe
E-Mu 1616M PCIe
Lynx AES16e-SRC PCIe
RME HDSPe-MADI PCIe
MOTU HD192 CORE PCIe
Solid State MADI Xtreme PCIe
Focusrite RedNet PCIe

I have no affiliation with Sweetwater, I'm merely a customer of theirs.

Sorry, I should have been clearer that I need analog connection for 8 in/outs. On your list, many require additional hardware for the analog connection. Thanks for the research, as I still haven't received the ESP1010e (its been 30 days since I ordered it), I may have to choose another sound card if B&H Photo can't come through with the device.

 The esp1010e is no longer available per the manufacturer.

julioxkingbeat

...you may have been surprised like I was to find that PCI slots are now a thing of the past...

I didn't expect that they would have gone altogether by now, as they seemed to be still very prevalent only 18 months ago.  I was shopping for a motherboard around Oct-Nov 2010 and I was surprised to find that the majority of boards still had 2 or 3 of the old PCI slots.  At the time I thought that one would have been sufficient.

Kev999, the latest chipsets may NOT have native support for PCI even though they have PCI slots on the motherboard. My motherboard for  example is one such instance of this.

On your list, many require additional hardware for the analog connection. Thanks for the research.

I ended up getting the M-audio ProFire 610, which I'm fairly happy with. The two XLR inputs don't have as much gain as I'd like but that was fixed with a small Mackie mixer with nice preamps. By the way, B&H Photo has this unit for $219 now, which is about 1/2 the normal price. If you need Firewire, this is a good unit with lots of analog outputs and 4 inputs.