The Power Mac G3 B&W AV card

Sometimes, when looking around at random, you come across things that seem very weird. For example, the Power Mac G3 (B&W) was not only equipped with the ATi Rage 128 cards, some models used a simple ATi Rage Pro.

I occasionally met people on forums, who were surprised to have an ATi Rage Pro instead of a Rage 128. The card, often seen in the Power Mac G3 used in the world of education, offers a different connection of the one generally proposed in this machine. Some sites still read the card as a standard option. On eBay, I came across an equipped Power Mac G3, and the back labeled « AV » (which is not the case on my classical model).

Un Power Mac G3 « AV »

Power Mac G3 « AV »

First, it uses a « Apple » VGA with two rows of connectors. Then it has analogical video inputs and outputs (composite and S-Video input, S-Video output) and – finally – a location to increase the video memory.

La carte vidéo

The video card


La mémoire extensible

Expandable memory


Entrées, sortie et VGA

Inputs, output and VGA

Technically, it’s an ATi Rage Pro with 4 MB of memory, with the ability to increase to 8 MB with an additionnal module of 4 MB (I got mine in a G3 iMac). I tried to install a module of 8 MB, but it was useless. The card is in PCI 32-bit / 33 MHz and therefore do not fit in the location of the original ATi Rage 128.

ATi XCLaim VR Pro

ATi XCLaim VR Pro


4 Mo

4 MB


8 Mo

8 MB

After finding a card (ref. 661-2199), I installed it in a Power Mac G3 without any worries, it works perfectly on Mac OS 9.2.2.