Unfortunately 3.31 is still tearing. I just gave it a major workout on 10.3.9 and it still tears.
Haven't tried 10.3.3 + 3.31 yet but 3.3 is stable on 10.3.3.
My systems use dedicated OS X drives which I reformat on a regular basis and I am pretty religious about only having a basic install on these. I use external SATA RAIDS and have a second disk in the machine which I use to boot from if I need to edit onsite or use the G5 for something els.
Cheers
Toby