Macintosh G3: More Speed For Less Money

By Robert J. Kohlhepp  Although G3 may not be the most captivating name for Apple Computer Corp.'s new machines, the price-performance numbers for the line will spark enough interest. At a starting price of $2,000, you can have a new Power Macintosh that outperforms its predecessors and the entire Wintel fleet. However, Apple should be taking pointers from competitors--namely, Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp.--and include 10/100-Mbps Ethernet on the motherboard. In Network Computing's University of Wisconsin labs, I test-drove a well-equipped G3/266. The performance was very impressive and, at a street price of $2,400, the machine offered 32 MB of RAM, a 4-GB disk and an internal ZIP drive. With a few clicks and some waiting, I installed a variety of software packages and had no trouble working with one of the fastest desktop computers available. New Architecture Not only is the PowerPC 750 chip--also known as G3--faster, the G3 implements what Apple calls a "back-side cache" that substantially improves performance. Apple has increased the cache memory bus to 133 MHz on the models featuring 266-MHz processors. Using numbers from IBM Corp.'s and Intel Corp.'s Web sites, a comparably clocked Pentium II processor performs up to 15 percent slower than our PowerPC 750-equipped Power Macintosh (SpecINT95 and SpecFP95). In the real world, running MacOS 8.0, I could easily tell that this G3 was noticeably faster running applications and accessing the network than my Power Mac 9600/200. However, after running a few Java tests with Pendragon Software's CaffeineMark 3.0, Java performance on Apple's MRJ 1.5.1 (Macintosh Runtime for Java) and Netscape Navigator 4.04 was a bit lackluster. Although the G3 is much faster than previous Macintoshes, the Intel processor (Pentium II/266) running Windows NT 4.0 SP3 more than doubled the G3's Java performance numbers. What About the Network? Unfortunately, Apple has made few updates on the networking end. A 10-Mbps Ethernet port is built on the motherboard, and optional Fast Ethernet cards, priced at $100 each, are available. However, competitors Compaq and Dell offer 10/100-Mbps Ethernet support standard. In Apple's strongest market, multimedia, faster network connections are a must. On the software side of networking, I installed a variety of NOS clients, including AppleShare Client 3.7.2 for AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), DAVE 1.0.1 for CIFS (Common Internet File System, a client for Windows networks) and NetWare Client 5.11 for NCP (NetWare Core Protocol). I didn't run into any surprises like I had with previous hardware revisions. For instance, when the PCI Power Macs were released, Novell had to update its client to support the new network interfaces. Once satisfied that the software still worked properly, I made the jump to Fast Ethernet by installing an AsanteFast PCI adapter. I was cruising along after a simple driver installation and connection to the university's Fast Ethernet drop. Again, I exercised a few protocols--namely, AFP (AppleTalk and TCP/IP), CIFS and NetWare NCP. I was very pleased with the compatibility and performance. Robert J. Kohlhepp can be reached at rkohlhepp@nwc.com.

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