The Creative Labs ES1373 chip is the rough equivalent to the Creative AWE 64 PCI audio card, and it delivers audio quality that is below the standards of the current audio card big guns, the Diamond MX300 Diamond, and Creative's own SB Live!. This isn't to say that the ES1373 chip on the SY-6VZA doesn't provide the user with adequate audio, it just reiterates that the AWE 64 is getting a little long in the tooth, and it shows. The big plus for the included audio ability on the SY-6VZA is that for the cost of just the board the sound capability basically comes along for the ride.

A single jumper (in the likely event that the board's user upgrades to an aftermarket option at some point) easily disables the ES1373 audio system on the SY-6VZA, and allows for the remapping of not only audio ports, but the midi/joystick port as well.

The various FSB speeds that the SY-6VZA supports are intended more for future Celeron CPUs, as most current PPGA Celeron CPUs can't handle bus speeds above 83MHz due to their increasingly higher clock multipliers. Intel does plan on moving the Celeron to a 100MHz FSB speed with the arrival of the 500MHz version of the chip sometime in late Summer/99. The SY-6VZA is ready for that jump a little early, as it supports a clock multiplier rating of up to 6.5x along with an FSB speed maximum of 133MHz.

A particular feature we admire on the SY-6VZA is its support for up to 512MB of SDRAM. With Celeron speeds increasing by the month, it's conceivable that some powerfully high-end desktop machines will be built upon mainboards exactly like this one. The Intel 440ZX-66 and 440ZX-AGP based S370 mainboards only support a maximum of 256MB of on board ram, which is somewhat limited for graphic artist or 3D rendering applications.

Let's look now at the overclocking ability of the SY-6VZA in more detail...