So, been playing the game for a while now. Third play thru. Never had this problem before. I have spent most of my time out in the wastes, or in/directly around Freeside. I ventured out a bit farther away from Freeside for the first time just now, out into the outskirts of New Vegas (around the area with the booby trapped Ranger corpse you have to retrieve for the soldier lady at Camp Mccarren). And I noticed that whenever I looked DIRECTLY at the building that the snipers are on, surrounding the corpse, my framerate dropped from 30-50 down to 2-5. The less and less of the building that was in my view, the better my fps got. I chalked it up to a weird glitch and moved on, after several frustrating reloads to clear the mines.

Then I moved on, out farther, towards the Ant Mound and the Abandoned Warehouse (used in a particular quest for a certain group in Freeside, so you'll know where I am headed). The warehouse dropped my framerate to the floor again. This time I did a real careful study of the phenomenon, just to make sure it wasn't something else. And it wasn't. It was the building.

So I moved on again, heading out to some of the Powder Gang infested farmsteads out a bit. Those were fine. I then realized I was close to Vault 3, and since I had a quest there, I headed that way...the ruined buildings surrounding Vault 3 did the same thing to my FPS that the last two buildings did. This made me mad. So I went, I got rid of all the mods I was using to beef up the graphics (which hadn't cause any issues anywhere else). No joy. Turned the graphical settings down to minimum (including resolution and draw distance) and still no joy.

So I went, turned all my graphical settings back up, and fast traveled ALL over the place. To about 2 dozen different locations that were NOT in the New Vegas outskirts. Didn't have a single problem anywhere else. Not in Primm, not in New Vegas or Freeside, not near the Share Croppers farms and the Clinic, not out by the Khans, not in Novac or Niption or Goodsprings or Sloan. No where. So I went back to the outskirts of New Vegas, checked all three locations again, and sure enough, my FPS drops down into the VERY low single digits again.

So now I am completely stumped and this is, obviously, totally impeding my ability to play. I have made F:NV LAA. I have the Stutter remover mod, along with the script extender to make sure it works and the Purge Cell Buffer mod. It isn't a temperature thing (as I have a temp gauge) and I can't think of anything else. The only other mods I am running affect the casinos (make it have higher betting limits) and give me more hairstyles/different clothing. And I doubt the second one is any problem, since me and Ed-E are the only ones around when these issues happen. Any advice would be welcome.

More testing. I also am having these problems inside the area that surrounds Vault 3 and inside Vault 3 itself.

The only other thing I can think of is that each and every one of the places where the frame rate drops into the dirt are places that formally had fiends in them (formally, cause I killed them all...well, ED-E did most of the killing, because my framerate was in the toilet and he/she/it is a little badapple).

anyone have any ideas?