i'm surprised at how many people have problems with playing these games. i run a 6 year old dell dimension 2400 that i upgraded myself with a nvidia geforce 8500 gt video card, 2GB ram, and even had to replace the pentium 4 cpu with a used celeron 2.60ghz because i accidently broke the original while doing a duma$$ interior cleaning. i did have to download and install the silent hill fix and lower my resolution to "low", but all the games run perfectly...with only a rare freeze-up.
i did find that having a good system file cleaner and regularly defragmenting helps a lot.
anyway...sorry to hear all you folks with those big rigs are having so much trouble.

I think the reason most PC users have these problems is because they load up on mods. I ran into some trouble my self and ended up re-installing, backing up files but starting from a fresh slate and it run extremely smooth with the vanilla setting which I find very unimpressive. Turns out my problem was caused by mods that makes nights darker and interior darker or at least this was the last straw I'm not sure. Oddly though this problem only occurred until after the newest dlc content was installed. You probably won't have any problems if you don't mod your game.

There are people with clean, default installs that have started with new characters who are having the same problems with the game crashing, hard locking and taking an excessive amount of time loading between indoor and outdoor levels without a single mode installed.

My money is on the Release 1.3 patch being the culprit which is required for Honest Hearts--and most likely the prior patches that paved the way for Dead Money are just as responsible.

I got Dead Money and Honest Hearts yesterday, did a clean install with the 1.3 patch and started a new character--no mods. I could barely run two steps in Goodsprings without the game suddenly stuttering to a complete stop before either continuing, or getting a CTD. It now takes a minute to load between indoor and outdoor levels.

Maybe if Bethesda actually spent more time fixing bugs than introducing new ones with "weapon rebalancing" and other "features" that have nothing to do with improving the stability and reliability of gameplay, people could actually enjoy their DLC without feeling that they've thrown nine bucks down the drain to beta-test Bethesda's software.

At this point, I'm going to wait until they release a GOTY with all the DLCs for the game. Probably by then, they'll have their patching act together as they did after the 1.5 patch that royally screwed up Fallout 3 after Broken Steel was released.

You'd think they'd learn by now...

They will never learn. If they did then Oblivion and Fallout 3 would have been free of bugs, after the crashfest that is Morrowind.

It's ridiculous how they continuously screw up their games with their 'patches'. But they really take the cake with their latest released piece of garbage.
I don't care if it's Obsidian or Bethesda's fault, shame, DEEP shame on them both to release an unstable crashfest that is Fallout: New Vegas.
Do they even beta test the crap that they release? I am seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY mind boggled here. Seriously.

I'll wait for the GOTY edition as well, if that ever gets released. A [censored] product like this shouldn't be associated with the words "Game of the year".