PowerBook G3 (1997)

Background

The PowerBook G3 was the first PowerBook to use the PPC 750, a third generation Motorola/IBM processor. The 750, or "G3" as it had been nicknamed before, was the first PPC processor designed to use a high speed, "backside" cache which could interact with the processor at much faster speeds than a standard L2 cache, which was restricted by the logic board speed. The PowerBook G3 was similar to the PowerBook 3400, with the addition of a 750 processor running at 250MHz, and a 512k backside cache running at a 2.5:1 processor to cache ratio (100MHz). The Power of the 750, combined with the high speed cache, made the PowerBook G3 the fastest notebook in the world, bar none (It clocked speeds nearly as fast as the 9600/300).