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

My PC Hardware/Operating Systems Prof told us about one I really liked. Higher up tried to order him to install single license software on multiple systems. Prof responded by pointing out that it was illegal, and that if anyone in the company reported it to the BSA, they'd be shut down for days and eat huge fines.

The higher-up's response was: 'Are you threatening me?'

In the end, prof asked to get the order in writing and the guy backed off.

Eh, Windows 7 x64 is also x86-64. While the core of the OS may be 64-bit compliant, not all it's constituent parts have to be. That instruction set still supports 32-bit commands so is not retricted to executing 64-bit only commands.

The fact that ANYONE here is using Wikipedia as ANY type of correct information source REALLY needs to do a reality check themselves. Wikipedia is one of the MOST UNRELIABLE pieces of pseudo-information on the web. Anybody in the world of academia will tell you this.

I like it.

Just wondering from a tech perspective, BW bought the engine 7 years ago, it was a prototype at the time that had optimization issues and almost no documentation to go with it, when they bought the engine they gave it to the engineers and said make it work, we begin production within the year.
Would that not create a huge problem that could last this entire time?

My point was that there was a Win7 x86-64, as well as a Win7 IA-32.

10.7 doesn't have a 32 bit flavor at all.

Sure it still supports legacy software, but there's no 32-bit only flavor.

Don't think that THAT hasn't already been discussed...

I think I lost a few.. ok, many brain cells reading this. A lot of it boils down to people think they know more than they actually do, and can often miss the obvious.

1. It doesn't matter how much RAM you have, any application written for 32bit windows has a 2GB address space limit. This is different from the hardware addressable space the OS uses. SWTOR appears to get around this limitation by running two processes each with their own 2GB memory max pool.

2. As said, the game does not do remote rendering, if anything the engine gets caught up on the animation system. If the game did remote rendering there would be no difference on performance between my laptop and gaming PC.

3. Per "I can play X game on high, but this game is slow": To me Deus Ex is a much better looking game that Civ V, yet my machine laughs at Deus Ex, yet chokes on Civ V. The difference is what, and how the two games. Its a lot harder to render many small objects than it is a few large ones. I can't find the blurb from Tomshardware.com that goes into how the different engines work and how drivers and card type affect performance. I dare say that http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/FishBowl/ is more system intensive when cranked up then crysis 2... yet all its doing is making fish swim...

The game has a lot of teething issues with a new engine that still needs tweaking.

"MOST UNRELIABLE pieces of pseudo-information on the web" [citation needed]

LOL +5 points
I guess "because I said so" is more reliable lol