Unfortunately, you will not be able to run even Premiere Pro CS5, let alone the latest releases of Premiere Pro CC, on that Mac Pro 1.1. This is because although the CPU technically supports 64-bit, the EFI and kernel of that system is only 32-bit, rendering that entire system only 32-bit capable. And that's even considering that the last version of Premiere Pro CC that supported OSX 10.7 was the first, 2013 (aka 7.0), release of Premiere Pro CC.
Neither of those, as configured. The first one still has a CPU that's too old to handle any newer codecs (it still predates the first-generation i7 CPU lineup), while the second one has a GPU that's not supported at all in any of the newer versions of Premiere Pro CC (that is, the renderer will become permanently locked to the software-only mode) because either the GPU is too old or it lacks a sufficient amount of graphics RAM to even enable GPU acceleration at all.
And that's not to mention that software companies do not like to support anything that's more than three years old. Your systems above are now more than eight years old.
That second configuration if tested by my Premiere Pro BenchMark would on the CPU intensive test would create an new low (bad) score.for performance. Those Quad core CPU's do not have hyperthreading and no turbo mode. A single Hard disk drive is totally inadequate for anything but possible Standard Definition video. The internal PCIe gen 2 and external USB 2.0 are useless for any expansion.
Your "Am I wrong in thinking I can update a Mac Pro for years to come?" question is ridiculous, You cannot do anything with that antique.
Actually, that second configuration - in the Mac Pro 4.1 - contains a quad-core hyperthreadable Xeon. Unfortunately, it is essentially a first-generation i7-920 CPU, which as you found out is actually a weakling CPU (ranking at the very bottom of the list of CPUs on that site). And if the Mac Pro 4.1's CPU is that weak to begin with, the Mac Pro 3.1's is even weaker because (as I mentioned above) it is based on the Xeon equivalent of the now-obsolete Yorkfield Core 2 Quad CPU. Both of those systems are actually as weak as or weaker than some cheap laptops in CPU performance.
And I found out why the GT 120 cannot use MPE GPU acceleration at all whatsoever in any version of Premiere Pro that has that feature: It does not have enough onboard graphics RAM to even enable the feature at all. And even if it did, newer versions of Premiere Pro don't support it at all because it's now obsolete. And that's not to mention that the GT 120 has only 32 CUDA cores - way too weak to be of much use in any event. In fact, it is so very, very weak that even today's on-CPU integrated Intel HD Graphics that's in the recent Haswell and newer generation CPUs completely slaughters that GT 120 in graphics and GPGPU performance.
So, to recap:
All three of those Mac Pros that the thread starter mentioned are completely useless for even casual video editing these days.
Running latest Premiere pro in a Mac Pro 2010 here. I also work freelance and I have to tell you that my old Mac Pro 2010 is most of the times way better than any brand new Mac Pro or imac.
of course is an oldie with tons of updates. 4 internal SSD, 2 PCI SSD accelsior pro, PCI Usb3 and Nvidia TitanX, 64Gb Ram
But yes. I edit 4K RAW DNG files, Prores with lumetris and fx realtime. I think this 8 years old Mac Pro will still be very good for at least 3 or 4 more years.
You have a Mac Pro 5.1 - the one that's equipped with Westmere-EP (Gulftown) CPUs instead of the older Bloomfield/Gainestown CPUs. It is the very last generation of the traditional tower Mac Pros before Apple came out with the "trashcan" design towers (which themselves have not been updated significantly since their introduction in 2013, and are overdue for a redesign).
You're welcome. You see, even the Mac Pro 4.1, at the cost that you would have paid for it as equipped, would have required you to spend a lot more money than what that machine is worth just in upgraded parts just to bring its performance level up to today's standards.
Just wanted to chime in that I'm still successfully working with Premiere Pro CC 2017 on a 3,1 Mac pro 2x 2.8GHz Quad-Core with 22GB 800MHZ RAM + ATI Radeon HD 5870. I mainly work with 4K footage from the Panasonic GH5 and have to make ProRes proxies so I can playback at full resolution but apart from that it's definitely usable. I've been using Premiere Pro for years, always updating to the latest version without problems until one of the later 2017 releases, when suddenly adding Lumetri quadrupled my render times for some reason.
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