My computer grinds to screeching halt if I enable either of these two options. Is the game broken? Is there a fix expected?

I exceed the minimum and even the recommended system requirements with an AMD Athlon 4000 and 2GB of RAM. Why are there whole aspects of the game I'm unable to utilize at all? My PC isn't exactly out dated yet...

Have you read the Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition FAQ? It has some information about this... look for the question 'My computer is very slow and/or freezes when playing a game'.

Secondly, make sure you have all the updates installed. The latest update is Version 1.02. You can tell what version you have by selecting 'About' from the Help menu.

Unfortunately, no one knows when the next update will be released.

Hope this helps!