  We present a calculation of the transition temperature for 3 flavor QCD using
p4-improved staggered fermions with two different variants of fattened links.
We examine various susceptibilities at two different values for the temporal
extent - $N_t = 4$ and $N_t = 6$ - in the vicinity of the 3 flavor transition
at vanishing chemical potential. For $N_t = 4$, we study bare quark masses in
the range $m_qa = 0.005$ to $m_qa = 0.1$, and for $N_t = 6$, we use $m_qa =
0.02$ to $m_qa = 0.2$. We also calculate hadron masses and the static quark
potential at zero temperature in order to set the scale for the transition
temperature and to study quark mass and cut-off dependent scaling properties of
the transition temperature. A comparison of the R Algorithm and the RHMC
algorithm for finite-temperature simulations is also made
