RD600 is ATI’s equivalent to the RD580 chipset for Intel’s platform and is expected to be launched at the same time as Intel let’s loose its Core 2 Duo processor series. RD600 will support both Core 2 Duo and earlier Socket 775 processors and just as RD580 for the AMD platform ATI has been focusing a lot on the circuits overclocking capabilities and the gearing towards enthusiasts. The chipset is already capable of running FSB speeds at 1333MHz and ATI believes that 1500MHz is within reach. Would there be a problem with the bus speeds there is nothing to worry about though, ATI has namely developed a completely asynchronous memory controller, which means that you can have the DDR2 memmory running at basically any frequency, completely independent of the processor’s bus.
ATI seems to have done a checklist of what functions and features NVIDIA offers with its coming nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition chipset. It has checked these and then added some of its own to show off what it has progressed. NVIDIA’s LinkBoost technology is countered by ATI’s own model that overclocks the PCI Express bus with up to 25%, which also results in better performance with Crossfire when not using the cable out back.
RD600 also sports three PCIe x16 slots on the motherboard, this is to be able to run Crossfire with two graphics cards and then a third Radeon X1000 card for physics acceleration.
