I was hoping Splinter Cell Conviction would have been cheaper, but thanks to HUKD someone posted a link to get it even cheaper, though it is for the direct Uplay version, rather than Steam (which then requires Uplay).

Splinter Cell Blacklist £5.99

cd key came within 5 mins, activated straight on Uplay, where I then bought both DLC packs (75% off - £1.97) to effectively get the Digital Deluxe edition for less than 8 quid :)

Also picked up The Bureau XCOM Declassified for £3.99. That was a straight forward Steam key. Can't say I'm expecting it to be of the calibre of XCOM Enemy Unknown, but for 4 quid I'll take a gamble on it.

As so many have said, an SSD is there to add speed, not storage capacity. Having a large SSD adds the convenience of not having to move programs around to get the speed boost.

I opted to link a 60GB mSSD to a 1TB 7200rpm disk with ISRT - this gives a significant boost to boot and loading times, as well as removing the need to constantly think about what is installed on what disk to free up space. I have 2 other 1TB drives for general storage.

I have an SSD in my work issued laptop, and we are now buying SSDs in all of our new laptops.

They are justified on both productivity and cost because of the better performance.

They are faster to boot and provide you with a usable laptop within a minute rather than 5+ by the time group policies have been applied. They are faster to image, encrypt, install updates to - all saving time or other business overheads. I work in a consultancy business, so everything is charged at day rates - multiply up a regular saving of a few minutes per day over a working year and it covers the small extra cost of the SSD over the traditional HDD many times over.

Hopefully the problem was just the lack of drivers so your PC defaulted to the onboard graphics - which struggled. With the correct drivers installed it should use your dedicated graphics card and hopefully get you into the game working properly :)

I didn't see your image before my last post - the i7 is decent, as is 12GB of RAM. The M in the CPU model suggests you have a laptop (M for mobile processor).

You should be able to see the model of graphics card you have by clicking on your Windows Experience Index rating. that will take you to a screen breaking it down into multiple parts (Processor, Memory, Graphics etc.). If you click on "view and print detailed performance and system information" it will give you more details and it should state what your graphics card is.

HP Envy is just the brand or model range - I searched the site and found it covers all sorts from tablets, laptops and desktops - there will be a huge difference in performance between a laptop mainly intended for web browsing and basic office work to a desktop intended for gaming. Knowing what you have will identify the spec of the machine, and how capable it is (or should be) to run the game.

Things like the intro movies can work because they are just pre-recorded videos - not very demanding on your PC. Once it starts to load the full engine to get the game ready to play it crashes out because it detects a problem (your error messages).

HD4600 reported in the error message is only a basic graphics chip (integrated graphics / onboard graphics) built in to the Intel CPU. It's fine for basic work, web browsing, watching videos etc. but is not intended for demanding games. For gaming you want a dedicated graphics card - typically Nvidia GeForce GTX 7xx / 6xx or AMD Radeon 7xxx / 6xxx which would be listed in the PC spec if it had one.

Can you post the full spec of your PC?

From the wording of the error message it suggests you are only using onboard graphics (HD4600 - built in to certain Intel CPUs). HD4000 is listed as minimum spec, so model-wise you are just above that, but it also requires atleast 512MB memory for it. If you only have say 2GB total for your PC there may not be enough to run everything and still set aside 512MB for the graphics the game requires.

The part about not having enough virtual memory might be helped by reading THIS ARTICLE with advice on how to increase the Virtual memory (page file).

Possibly broken because it links to an "AU" version of GameSpot. Now the regions have been removed (UK, Asia, Australia - ones I was aware of) I think any link that was specific to them has also been broken :(

After a 2 month and 2 day absence the F1PU has re-appeared on the GameSpot forums.

Still quite a few pages that don't want to load - including the first page of this thread! - but hopefully something that will be sorted out in the not too distant future. It also looks like the new way quoting works (or doesn't) has screwed up several posts above.

As anyone who has been following Formula 1 will know, the 2013 season finished 2 weeks ago in Brazil. The downtime of the GameSpot unions meant that the discussion and predictions for the races in Japan, India, Abu Dhabi, USA and Brazil were only possible for those who used the backup union boards.

If the forum glitches are only temporary I will update the first couple of posts in this thread with the final results or I will repost them here later. For now they can be seen on the backup union boards for those who are registered there.

I've scrolled back through 50 pages of post history - seems quite a few missed the cut :(

Redders1989 has just posted the Formula One Passion Union

The Decision Based Gaming Union - a union for discussing strategy and management games (eg. XCOM, Civ, Sim City, Football Manager etc.)

There are quite a few bugs with these forums - threads that fail to load with 500 errors - some threads can be accessed only via page numbers as the main title link breaks. Unions don't show up in the search - tis but a barren wasteland. There are no powers to change stickied topics - so things that were relevant just prior to the unions being axed are not so relevant any more.

Now to get the word out and try to contact old members, and see if those who are now using other sites as alternatives are willing to come back...

over a month ago they were supposedly ready given a comment that "they should have gone live yesterday", but here we are after 2 months and still nothing.

I think the last I heard was it wouldn't be happening before the PS4 launch (happened) and that it was also unlikely to be before the XB1 launch (also happened).