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The Power Macintosh G3 (commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases) was a series of personal computers made by Apple from November 1997 to January 1999. It used the PowerPC G3 (PPC750) microprocessor, and succeeded the Power Macintosh line, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models; it was itself succeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which kept the name but was a totally new design.

A major leap forward was made in this model through the introduction of a fast, large Level 2 backside cache, running at half processor speed, which reduced data bottlenecks and allowed very efficient use by the computer of its bus speed; 512 KB on the 233 MHz and 266 MHz models, 1 MB on the 300 MHz, 333 MHz and later models. Because of this, at the time Power Macintosh G3 machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed.

The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa/LC models and the high-end Power Macintosh 8600 and 9600. During development, it quickly became evident that the G3 was a faster machine than the PPC604-based Macs, so the Power Macintosh G3 became the flagship instead, and the PPC60x architecture was dropped altogether from the desktop line.

Hardware

The beige Power Macintosh G3 series came in three versions: an "Outrigger" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300; a minitower similar to (but shorter than) the Power Mac 8600 enclosure; and a version with a built in screen, the G3 All-In-One ("AIO"), that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU from Motorola, these machines used a 66 MHz system bus and PC66 SDRAM (actual operating frequencies 66.83 MHz), and used standard ATA hard disk drives instead of the SCSI drives used in most previous Apple systems.

The Platinum G3s used Apple's new "Gossamer" motherboard, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. Remnants of this effort can be seen in the board's form factor, which is nearly identical to the PC ATX motherboard standard, in the board's solder points for a PC-type floppy drive, and in the board's ability to use both proprietary Apple power supplies and industry-standard ATX power supplies. A compact and versatile motherboard, the Gossamer board was originally designed to be able to support both the high-end PowerPC 604e and the new PowerPC G3, but when initial tests found that the cheaper G3 outperformed the 604e in many tests, this functionality was removed and Apple's 604e-based systems died a quiet death.

The desktops ranged from 233 to 300 MHz, with the minitowers ranging from 233 to 333 MHz. The 233 and 266 MHz desktop models shipped with 4 GB hard drives, and the 300 MHz with a 6 GB drive, all at 5400 RPM. The 233 MHz minitower shipped with a 4 GB drive, the 266 MHz with a 6 GB drive, and the 300 MHz minitower shipped with two 4 GB drives in a RAID configuration; all models were 5400 RPM. The 300 MHz minitower was replaced by the 333 MHz tower, which shipped with a 9.1 GB 7200 RPM SCSI drive, attached to a SCSI/PCI card — this model also included 100BASE-TX Ethernet (as opposed to the other models' 10BASE-T), though this was in the form of a PCI card, which occupied another PCI slot. Unlike its predecessor, the 300 MHz minitower, the 333 MHz model had only 6 MB VRAM, because the 300 MHz model shipped with a 128-bit iXMicro PCI video card with 8 MB VRAM. The AIO shipped in two basic configurations, a 233 MHz version with a floppy drive and a 4 GB hard drive, and a 266 MHz version with a built-in Zip drive, floppy drive, and the "Wings" personality card. Half of the AIO's case was translucent, suggesting what might come with the iMac; it is considered by many to be the precursor to the iMac. These machines had no audio circuitry on the logic board; instead, a PERCH slot (a dedicated 182-pin microchannel connector; a superset of the PCI spec, but doesn't accept PCI cards) for a "personality card" was populated with a "Whisper" personality card on regular versions, offering 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio I/O, or a "Wings" personality card, an AV version which included composite and S-Video capture and output. DVD-ROM drives were now an available option, and Zip drives continued to be available as well.

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