A novel method of overflow data handling in a multiport data switching system having a decision making engine for controlling data forwarding between receive ports and at least one transmit port. Data blocks representing received data packets are placed in data queues corresponding to the receive ports. The data queues are transferred to logic circuitry for processing in accordance with a prescribed algorithm. Then, a forwarding decision is made to determine the transmit port. An overflow bypass is provided to allow at least a portion of a data block to bypass the logic circuitry, when at least one of the data queues is in an overflow state. For example, pointers indicating memory locations for storing the corresponding received data packets may be transferred via the overflow bypass when the overflow state is detected.