Steam GOTY Edition
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit
Q6600 2.40Ghz
NVIDIA 8800GT
4GB Ram
EVGA 780i motherboard of some sort with on-board sound, Realtek HD drivers.

This is not the typical freezing/crashing issue many people have complained about.

Yes I read other posts about freezing/crashing. I've tried a number of their suggested fixes (K-lite codec issues, the Quad Core .INI edits, Windows Media Player as default) to see if they'd do anything, I've updated my video/audio drivers, and I also bumped the display settings to Low for a bit just to see if it was somehow how a graphics performance issue, but the problem persisted.

It's not that the game suffers frequent end-of-the-world crashing (happens, but not too often), but rather it will seemingly randomly stop moving for 3-4 seconds at a time. This happens whether I'm wandering around the wastes, poking around indoors, or even standing around having a conversation with a local chem junkie.

If I move the mouse during the pause, the change will register once the game gets moving again (i.e. I'll suddenly be looking to my left, at my feet, at the sky, etc. Or in the case of a pause during a conversation, the mouse will suddenly move to another area of the screen). However, if I shoot, press reload, or attempt any other action during the freeze, it does not register (thought that might somehow be relevant).
I'm having absolutely no other audio/graphical/performance issues other than this, and the game otherwise runs at a steady, playable framerate (I typically use the "High" setting).

I'm wondering if this is somehow audio-related, as this pause always occurs when I switch the radio on/off (though the DLC "Hey, look at me!" radio stations don't seem to be affected).
I usually play with the radio off, but one time I had it on and, at some point during the Galaxy radio broadcast, it began freezing, resuming (for a fraction of a second), immediately refreezing, resuming, etc over and over and over again until I maneuvered my mouse through my pip-boy and flicked it off, at which point the game began running just swell (until the next lone random pause).

As I've heard these games seem to share many of the same problems, I figured I'd mention that this does not occur when I play New Vegas. I've logged 125+ hours on that game with only the occasional freeze/crash.
... Anybody? I need my Fallout fix, but this gets quite irritating.