upgrade or new sound card?

Don't really know what to do. I have a pc I would like to use to run CEP/AA. At the moment, I still run CEP1.2a. Never upgraded as the audio restoration tools where not changed to RT, so it did not matter.

But this pc has a creamware pulsar. And creamware followed the micro$oft rules of: "only >16bit if using WDM in w2k". So it only works up to 16bit with CEP1.2a. But it did 24bit with the cep2.0 demo.

So I have to upgrade to AA. But I never registered my copy (yes, I should have done so....) and while synth mentioned to contact them in that case, adobe stays stumm. Or get another card with adat i/o. Both are about the same cost.

Any good reasons to make this choice?