Product Reviews

The new Power Mac G3/333 minitower is officially the fastest Mac available from Apple. As a 333MHz G3 system, it should give even a 400MHz Pentium II a good run for its money and is probably the fastest desktop machine in the world.

The G3/333 builds on the success of its predecessor, the 300MHz G3 - which is still available. The current Apple range for desktop machines comprises 266, 300 and 333MHz machines, so the company is clearly using a three-level strategy, dropping the slower processor - in this case the 233MHz range - as faster devices come along. This is great as long as prices keep in step, which they certainly seem to be doing at the moment.

The machine we looked at was a fairly basic specification - with build-to-order machines available via the AppleStore, you can customise them, although at the time of writing only a pre-built system was available in the UK. This will no doubt change in the very near future, as more stocks become available.

The standard G3/333 comes with 1Mb of Level 2 cache, 128Mb of RAM, a 24x CD-ROM drive, 6Mb of VRAM, and a 9Gb Ultra Wide SCSI hard drive, including the PCI Card which makes this possible.

Ultra Wide SCSI has support for 20Mbits/sec data transfer, a 16-bit data path and up to 15 peripherals. This is a significant improvement on the 'Narrow' SCSI built into most Macs, which has an 8-bit data path, 10Mbits/sec transfer, and support for seven devices.

There are two free PCI slots, but in the sort of environment where people need this kind of speed, another slot will almost certainly be filled immediately by a 10/100Mb Ethernet card, since - rather astonishingly - the machine's on-board Ethernet is still only 10Base-T.

Changing this to 10/100Base-T would no doubt involve redesigning the motherboard, at least to some extent, so Apple's excuse will be that it's much more cost-effective to leave it as an option for those who need the extra networking speed. But these days it's becoming a necessity in graphics production environments where the largest market for this machine will be. And given that the iMac has 10/100Base-T as standard, it feels like something of a slap in the face to be told that Apple's

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highest-spec machine lags behind a system that's being sold as a consumer Mac.

It's not just the extra cost that's irritating, though. It's the fact that, given the SCSI PCI card already in place, adding decent networking will leave you with just one free PCI slot. And that's just not enough for people working in video production, or even high-end graphics professionals who want at least one more monitor attached to the system. Apple's decision to only produce machines with three PCI slots could seriously hamper the company at the high end of the market.

Like its predecessor, the G3/300, the G3/333 doesn't ship with an internal Zip drive in its standard configuration, although when 'build to order' becomes available this will be an option. Apple's reasoning for excluding the Zip on the G3/300 was that the markets at which it was targeted wouldn't want such a low-capacity drive. Strange then that the floppy drive should survive, particularly given interim CEO Steve Jobs' determination to get rid of floppy disks - it's pretty safe to assume that the next generation of high-end G3s will come without floppies.

PCI gripes aside, the G3/333 is a screamingly fast machine. Our test results show that it beats the 300MHz G3 by a reasonable margin. True, a second or so faster might not seem that much, but when you're working with graphics all day, every second counts - even the slightest increase in responsiveness can make working a much more pleasant experience.

When the G3/333 becomes a build-to-order machine in the UK, available options will include a DVD drive, rather than the standard CD-ROM drive, and an accelerated graphics card. And if the options available in the US are anything to go by, you'll be able to specify less RAM and an IDE internal hard drive rather than the Ultra Wide SCSI one which is included as part of the 'base' specification. However, neither option is particularly sensible - indeed, the sort of people who'll need this type of speed will almost certainly be looking to increase the amount of RAM and buy extra external hard disks, not reduce the specification.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Power Mac G3/333 is its price. For £2130 you can buy the most powerful Mac to date; another £50 or so will give it 10/100Base-T networking, so for under £2200 you have a Mac that blows away any PC in its price bracket.

Playing the keep-up game as specifications improve, seemingly by the month, is hard work, but with the latest G3 Mac, Apple has managed to combine top performance with a very reasonable price. (The G3/300, when we reviewed it back in May, cost £2399 without the Ultra Wide SCSI option and with only 64Mb of RAM.) If you're looking for a seriously high-end graphics Power Mac, this is the machine for you.