MP 1,1-5,1 Is it worth putting thousands into repairing and upgrading a 5,1?Upgrades

[theMarble]

So I've been deciding whether to get a 2020 Mac or a 5,1. The upgrades seem really good (X5690, Radeon VII, 96GB RAM, multiple drives) but I'm worried about the future of these machines and whether it's worth spending thousands to upgrade a 10 year old Mac when Intel is being phased out in 3-4 years? Will the 5,1 be getting Big Sur and 11.1, 11.2 and maybe 11.3? They said that they would make Universal Intel releases for a few more years and it seems like the 5,1 should be getting Big Navi GPUs once Apple Silicon come out as they're likely using Big Navi GPUs on the high-end models.

 

[racer]

So I've been deciding whether to get a 2020 Mac or a 5,1. The upgrades seem really good (X5690, Radeon VII, 96GB RAM, multiple drives) but I'm worried about the future of these machines and whether it's worth spending thousands to upgrade a 10 year old Mac when Intel is being phased out in 3-4 years? Will the 5,1 be getting Big Sur and 11.1, 11.2 and maybe 11.3? They said that they would make Universal Intel releases for a few more years and it seems like the 5,1 should be getting Big Navi GPUs once Apple Silicon come out as they're likely using Big Navi GPUs on the high-end models.

The official OS support for the cMP (4,1-5,1) has stopped at Mojave. Neither Catalina nor Big Sur are supported or will be supported on these machines, officially.
Bear that in mind if you decide to go for the older model.

 

[doobydoooby]

Personally, I wouldn't plough 'thousands' into a ten year old machine. You can polish and polish but ultimately it has all the limitations of a ten year old motherboard. Do the cheap stuff, the not-quite-top-model-but-huge-improvement ram upgrades, graphics card, ssds, maybe a new cpu if you can find one cheap on ebay, but don't spend beyond what you would if you thought next year you couldn't keep up with the OS releases. You are beyond end of lifespan so its just a matter of days until you can't keep up with the OS update cycle. I kept my 2008 model going until earlier this year and there was a huge sense of satisfaction with that, but eventually I buckled down and bought the latest model because my 3,1 couldnt play with catalina unless i really mucked around under hood. i figured twelve years was an absolutely brilliant run. Funnily enough on a day to day use basis there isn't much difference in terms of raw speed between the two but I'm happy to be spending my money on something with a renewed lifespan and the old model still works fine as a second box elsewhere in the house.