How far can you upgrade a 2006 Mac Pro Tower?

[sbones]

Greetings,

My father bought a 2006 Mac pro tower. Its has the Intel Xeon 2.66 dual core cpu and is running Mac OSX Lion, 10.7.5.

Here are all the specs:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-2.66-specs.html

He want to be able to run 64bit software and the latest version of bootcamp that supports Windows 10.

Is it possible for him to upgrade enough for that? Can the components be upgraded inside the machine, such as logic board, in order to accommodate it if necessary? Should he buy a newer Mac Tower or just get an Imac. Our budget is $500 - $1000.

I appreciate the help!

Thanks!

 

[Ultracyclist]

How about this?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-do-you-think.1957047/#post-22583685

Goodluck!

 

[Beagl3]

The latest version of bootcamp is only available for devices from 2012 and newer. But Windows 10 also works fine with the older bootcamp driver package.

 

[hwojtek]

Just in short: with 2,1 firmware flash you can have 2x quad-core Xeons 3.0 GHz, up to 64 GB RAM, up to 12 TB HD if not using the optical bay (most 4 TB drives do not fit directly into the cradles), any AMD PCIE video card, any optical drive.

With a $1000 budget you're about to almost max out the computer. Including the actual computer.

That said: the RAM is kinda slow and it's only SATA2, but hell, this 10-years old computer still can compete with modern iMacs.

 

[ActionableMango]

Is it possible for him to upgrade enough for that? Can the components be upgraded inside the machine, such as logic board, in order to accommodate it if necessary? Should he buy a newer Mac Tower or just get an Imac. Our budget is $500 - $1000.

Yes it is possible but with that kind of budget, I'd just get a newer MP. You will be able to avoid a lot of hassles, limitations, and workarounds.

If you have an existing monitor, keyboard, and mouse, a used 4,1 should fit in the $1000 budget. It will run Windows 10 and OS X 10.11. Plus it will be a lot faster, and there will be plenty of room to grow in the future.

I don't know anything about iMac prices.

 

[cmanns]

I run a MacPro 1,1 with Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan

The hassle sucks, and I think am going to switch back to hackint0sh as the prices of the newer macpros are still high. The 1,1 does perform decently I feel 4 core to 8 core 3.0ghz would be dandy, but the memory seems to be a huge limitation....and the EFI32 is rather annoying.

FreeBSD works though , have to install ZFS with grub for MBR/legacy boot though