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Q
& A:
Power
Mac G3 Q & A:
Technical & Performance
What are the primary differences
between the two Power Mac G3 series?
In spite of identical names, the original Power Macintosh G3 series and Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series are completely different.
The obvious difference is case type, as the original Power Macintosh G3 series comes in an easy-to-upgrade "platinum" tower case, which was also used for the Power Macintosh 8600 and 9600 series and the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series comes in a unique, easy-to-upgrade, translucent "blueberry" and white case. While the original case opens with ease, Apple made the Blue and White case even easier, with a single latch that opens the case revealing the logic board. For pictures, please refer to the appropriate specs page.
The two Power Macintosh G3 series use motherboards that differ in just about every way imaginable. The original motherboard has onboard SCSI, video, and 1.44 MB floppy disk support but no built-in USB or FireWire (an optional FireWire card was available), while the Blue G3 motherboard has onboard USB and FireWire, and no built-in SCSI (optional card available), video (16 MB video card pre-installed), and no 1.44 MB floppy support. The original G3 system bus runs at 66 MHz, with processor speeds ranging from 233 MHz to 333 MHz, and the Blue and White G3 system bus runs at 100 MHz, with initial processor speeds from 300 MHz to 450 MHz.
Essentially, the original Power Macintosh G3 series represents the last of the "old Apple" and the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series represents the first of the "new Apple" leading the "post-Beige revolution".
How fast are the Power Macintosh G3 series compared to each other?
Apple-published MacBench 5.0 benchmarks show that the new Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series are around 25%-40% faster than models in the original Power Macintosh G3 series. The only exception is the Power Macintosh G3/300 (Blue) (discontinued on June 1, 1999) that is a little bit slower than the previously released Power Macintosh G3/300 MT. This is likely due to the 512k of backside cache in the Blue G3/300 as opposed to 1 MB of backside cache in the original G3/300.
How fast are the Power Macintosh G3 series compared to Windows PCs?
According to Apple-released BYTEmark integer tests, both Power Macintosh G3 series perform around twice as fast as comparably equipped Windows PCs. For example, the Power Macintosh G3/400 (Blue) with a 400 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) processor topped a 450 MHz Pentium II-based system from Compaq, with a BYTEmark Integer Processor score of 13.3 compared to 6.2. More recent models in the Power Macintosh G3 Series perform equally well against equivalently-priced PCs.
Does the Power Macintosh G3 series support dual monitors?
Yes, both the original and the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series can support dual monitors with the addition of a PCI video card for the second monitor. The original Power Macintosh G3 series has onboard support for one monitor, and the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series has a pre-installed ATI 3D Rage 128 GL video card with 16 MB of VRAM to support one monitor.
Does the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series have a ROM?
Like the iMac, the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series does not have the traditional 4 MB ROM that the original Power Macintosh G3 series has, but it does have a Boot ROM that is around 1 MB. Codenamed "NewWorld", Apple describes the new method as not having a "single, large ROM that contains the many components of the Mac OS software, along with the 68K emulator, hardware initialization, and the nanokernel." and instead it has "a small ROM [that] provides hardware initialization functions and provides a mechanism to load the Mac OS ROM image into RAM."
For exhaustive details on the NewWorld architecture, please refer to the Apple Developers Note for the Blue and White Power Macintosh G3 series (p. 70-93).
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