ATI's upcoming RD600 chipset will ship as the CrossFire Xpress 3200 and, like Nvidia's nForce 500 series, support automatic overclocking, according to online reports.

The chipset will run the frontside bus at up to 1500MHz, leaked presentation slides posted on a DailyTech report show, while the PCI Express bus can run at up to 25 per cent above standard speed - the better for CrossFire cards that connect solely across the PCI-E bus.

Crucially, the memory clock is independent of the FSB and CPU clock frequencies, allowing users to clock each to their maximum. A separate slide indicates the chipset will support DDR 3 SDRAM.

According to the report, RD600 will support three x16 PCI Express connectors - two for graphics and the third for a graphics card doubling up as a physics processor. Boards based on the part will retail for around $150, the report adds. ®