The Power Macintosh G3/233 was part of the first generation
of machines from Apple based on the new 750 PowerPC or G3
processor. It is the low end model of the family which is
comprised of another 266Mhz desktop model and a 266Mhz minitower.
All three machines were considered mid-range models in terms
of price and expandability, but surpassed Apple's high-end
machines of the time in terms of raw speed. All three G3 machines
sold extremely well and helped rejuvenate interest in the
Macintosh platform at a time that it had been lagging.
The
G3 chip found in the 233Mhz desktop model was a faster version
of the PowerPC processor. It's speed is enhanced because the
L2 cache resides on a dedicated backside bus running at 133Mhz
between processor and cache. Previously L2 cache performance
was limited by the speed of the main logic board bus which
runs at a much slower speed. Also adding to the speed was
a new type of memory called SDRAM. A reprogrammed memory controller/PCI
bridge was able to carry out multiple tasks, previously only
one instruction could be sent at a time.
The processor and cache reside in on a removable card that
fits into a PC type ZIF socket making it easy to replace with
a faster processor. The main system bus of these G3 machines
runs at 66Mhz (previous Macs ran at 50Mhz). The G3/233 comes
with 32MB SDRAM, expandable to 192 into the 3 DIMM sockets
(standard profile 128MB DIMMs will not fit in this machine).
The graphics controller is the ATI 3D Rage II+DVD and the
machine come standard with 2MB SGRAM graphics memory which
allows for millions of colors (32-bit) at up to 832 x 624
resolution. Graphics memory is expandable to 6MB which will
allow millions of colors at higher resolutions and faster
3D performance. There are 3 PCI slots for add on cards and
a proprietary slot for the included personality card, which
on this machine includes 16-bit stereo in/out and 56Kbps modem.
The drive is a 4GB IDE and the CD ROM is 24x. There are one
or two free 3.5" dive bays and support of internal and
external SCSI (5Mbytes per second). The machine case is easy
to get into and the simplicity of the new logic board design
make upgrades a snap.
For Great Prices On Upgrades
Check The Vendors Below
Index
of all online Macintosh hardware and software reviews
Below you will find the MacBench 5.0 results for most of
the processor upgrades available for this machine.
** Note that MacBench does not take advantage of the Velocity
Engine (AltiVec instructions) of the G4. For AltiVec accelerated
applications
you can see a 1.4 to 4 times performance improvement over
the G3, depending on the application and the functions you
are trying to perform.
"But I thought that the G4 was so much faster than
the G3?" In some cases it is! For G4 Application specific
scores - Click
Here
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5/17/01
The
G3 chip found in the 233Mhz desktop model was a faster version
of the PowerPC processor. It's speed is enhanced because the
L2 cache resides on a dedicated backside bus running at 133Mhz
between processor and cache. Previously L2 cache performance
was limited by the speed of the main logic board bus which
runs at a much slower speed. Also adding to the speed was
a new type of memory called SDRAM. A reprogrammed memory controller/PCI
bridge was able to carry out multiple tasks, previously only
one instruction could be sent at a time.
For Great Prices On Upgrades 