Why is there a copy protection system in the graphics, and is it crippling the game?

I'm actually not.

I only have 1GB VRAM for starters, and the behavior of the process under the influence of the two memory leaks makes it pretty clear that there's WELL more than 3GB of address space available for the 'system memory' when it's running in WOW64. I haven't found any writeup, let alone a good one, on how WOW64 handles VRAM, but the mere fact that the memory leaks caused the client to balloon to 3.7-3.8GB or so physical memory usage before crashing out suggests that somehow, it's not using much if any more than 256MB of VRAM, despite there being 4 times that available.

There are no high resolution textures, Bioware are liars.

There is no spoon.

I would link the beta forums when the devs talked about it, but they deleted it, the devs have closed almost every thread that asks what it is with working as intended /end thread, no explanation.

A debugger is the only thing I can think it would be as it seems to function exactly like the one in beta, if it was some attempt to "multi-thread" or vram, as some have suggested, there would not be 2 .exe, as sharing information between 2 executable would consume more information than simply having one.

regardless of what exactly it is, it should not be there, which was my point.

that is correct, they even canceled the update that was supposed to allow access to high res textures due to circumstances they will not elaborate on.

Last I heard, Blizzard was distributing 64 bit clients, and I can see why: There are vidcards currently on the market with 4GB of RAM. 2GB is not unusual, and ATI's shiny new card has 3GB. The extra vram is useless unless there's address space for it, which because of microsoft's shenanigans there isn't on a 32bit OS, not without crippling the system.

If developers want to be able to use the extra VRAM to load more and higher quality textures, we're fast approaching the point where it could ONLY be done on a 64 bit client. The fact that WOW64 doesn't have any of its 4GB being used by the system helps a lot, but 2GB VRAM still only leaves 2GB of addresses left for the game itself. I've seen SWTOR hit 1.5 GB in normal usage. On windows XP with a 2GB Vidcard, that would be very tight. On windows 7, it'd be RAM starved and paging like crazy.

Not to mention the crazy buggers buying those overpriced monstrosities that have all that VRAM aren't going to accept not being able to use it just because a developer doesn't want to do a 64 bit client...

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. A memory leak is a bug, for starters. If the process is LAA then sure on a 64-bit OS a single LAA 32-bit process can run up to 4GB address space (or usually a bit less by the time fragmentation gets involved) before running out and thus crashing out with an invalid page fault. My point remains that if you want to map a large quantity of data on a 32-bit OS, including support for 1 or 2 GB VRAM cards, you need two processes. WOW64 doesn't handle VRAM at all, DirectX does. In order to address VRAM you must map it into address space. Whilst Windows 7 & DX11 are much better at this, the target minimum market for TOR remains XP & DX9. Your actual VRAM usage is reported separately to Private Bytes & Working Set. There is nothing that requires all of the VRAM to be mapped in one go as a single 1GB chunk.

Again, address space usage is only indirectly linked to physical RAM usage. Memory leaks are bugs, they are not indicators of correct or expected behaviour.

The definition and proof requirement of False Advertising is:

As such, this issue clearly falls into this category. I would not have purchased this game, spending over 120 dollars for the Collectors Edition, had it been advertised correctly as a low resolution game.
The game was misrepresented by screenshots, video play (check out any of the videos posted on youtube under the "Directors commentary") and beta experiences as a product that they had no intent to deliver upon at launch.

Simply put:

I don't really care if some of you feel that it "isn't a big deal". We were marketed and sold a product with no capability from the vendor to deliver that product. We got a beat-up pick up truck instead of the fancy sports car that we test drove. This is a MAJOR issue. Accepting problems like this only set a precedent for future games to do the same, because we're willing to accept unfinished products that do not make good on their claims. How quickly would you take a product back to the grocery store if it advertised the product as steak, but you found out it was hot dog meat? Sure, you can eat it, and might even be able to convince yourself its nearly the same thing, but dollars to donuts you'd take it back for your 10 dollars - why wouldn't you do the same for your 50 dollar investment?
Don't let this get swept under the rug.

Rather than sit here and complain about it, it's simple enough to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. I have already done so. It takes a few minutes to file the complaint online;

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.go...d.aspx?Lang=en

Don't take answers like this. You as a consumer are entitled to get the product you purchased.

Engine only uses about 35% video memory in character heavy areas. (Such as Faction Fleets during Prime time on Very Heavy Servers)

And my point is you don't know that. I can think of lots of things it could be, as well as providing debug support in beta. Your statement is flawed. There are plenty of reasons to run things outside your main process. At least one has already been stated.

You don't know that it shouldn't be there.

Your argument is equivalent to a customer of ours stating (hypothetically) 'there's an EXE I don't know about next to my design application in Process Explorer, it shouldn't be there' when it's a signed part of our product. My response would be the same 'working as intended'.

Valid explanation for address allocation but just how much RAM is actually being used to store? Ppl are still using x86 systems where the max RAM is 3GB. But then again, this is also dependent on their hard drives and platter rotation. Why hard drives are important here as well? Because x86 are "older systems" and can only accomodate up to 3GB of RAM, virtual memory has to be employed.

For those of you who are civilians, "Virtual Memory" is the "page-file" system on your computer. Huh? Ok, real simple.

x86 (32 bit) computers today have the capacity to use up to 3GB of RAM (random-access memory) available for use by the CPU (central processing unit). Often, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most users expect to run at once. For example, if you load the Windows operating system, an e-mail program, a Web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, the 3 gigs can go quite fast. If there were no such thing as virtual memory, your computer would have to say, "Sorry, you cannot load any more applications. Please close an application to load a new one." With virtual memory, the computer can look for areas of RAM that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load the new application.

Because it does this automatically, you don't even know it is happening, and it makes your computer feel like is has unlimited RAM space even though it has only 3 gigs installed. Because hard-disk space is so much cheaper than RAM chips, virtual memory also provides a nice economic benefit.

The area of the hard disk that stores the RAM image is called a page file. It holds pages of RAM on the hard disk, and the operating system moves data back and forth between the page file and RAM. (On a Windows machine, page files have a .SWP extension.)

Of course, the read/write speed of a hard drive is much slower than RAM, and the technology of a hard drive is not geared toward accessing small pieces of data at a time. If your system has to rely too heavily on virtual memory, you will notice a significant performance drop. The key is to have enough RAM to handle everything you tend to work on simultaneously. Then, the only time you "feel" the slowness of virtual memory is in the slight pause that occurs when you change tasks. When you have enough RAM for your needs, virtual memory works beautifully. When you don't, the operating system has to constantly swap information back and forth between RAM and the hard disk. This is called thrashing, and it can make your computer feel incredibly slow.

So from all of this info that I've provided, the question now begs to be asked: do ppl with 64 bit systems, RAM over 4GB up to 12 or 16 and hard drives with platter speeds of 7600 rpms or higher with over 1TB of storage still experiencing these type of freaky lag issues? If so, then there is still something else at work here that BW is NOT sharing with us.