It was quite simple, just make a profile for Fallout in nvidia control panel and on power management chose maximum performance. Before I did this I crashed so much ... I also dont get the 5 second lag when exiting conversations / merchant anymore.

So ... if you get the driver stopped responding CTD with the new drivers try this. And it was quite refreshing to see the problem was not related to Fallout NV this time :>

So it stops the downclocking when you go to a ingame menu and Windows thinks you're in 2D mode? Interesting - I'll give that a try.

Yes, Nvidia users: if power management is set to Adaptive, it may be causing crashes. Set it to Maximum Performance like he says.

adaptive can not cause any crashes, its only useful for old games where they dont need as much gpu power so the gpu downclocks, when set to adaptive in newer games like FNV the gpu will run at full speed without interruption anyway

your crashes were caused by something else, and yes, nvidia has included profile settings for FNV in the 260.99 drivers to optimalize the game, thats why its always recommended to use profiles for each game you play

9 out of ten times when the game crashes alot it is not caused by falloutNV.exe but something else, but 99% of the people just click "close falloutnv.exe" when it crashes, instead of checking the crash report (or eventvwr.exe) to see which module caused it

On a clean FNV install, using the 260.99 drivers and with the .dll that fixes the NPC slowdown I got random crashes quite often ... And when exit trade / conversations and saving/loading saves I had a few seconds of lag after, which sometimes caused the game the crash. Very easy to reproduce and check for yourself.

All the above problems was solved by removing adaptive and choosing performance instead. So no, my crashes was not caused by something else. Might add I had no problem what so ever with this on my old drivers. So ... I'm sorry, you are wrong, I'm right. And the behavior with card clocking down while in conversations and/or trade etc explains the lag and crashes when exiting those. So I really dont know what you are talking about, but logic clearly arent your strong side :z

Anyway, hope it help others, it helped me and 2 friends of mine atleast, and I'm quite sure we arent alone with this particular problem

After investigating the issue a bit more using the all mighty Google I noticed I'm for sure not alone about this problem and the "fix" I mentioned above works very well. Some quotes;

Has anyone checked if the clock speeds for your card(s) change to 2D speeds when you experience these frame-rate drops? It's not that likely but I've seen it before in Fallout 3. If they are, forcing 3D speeds in nVidia Control Panel under Fallout: New Vegas' profile should solve the issue. That is, of course, if there is a profile yet. If not, either create one or see if the latest beta drivers have one.
- nvidia forums

So, unlike the above game fix, this is aimed specifically to help those with NVIDIA video cards. Note that if you do NOT have this issue, it has been reported that older drives don't have this problem with the game, and that newer drivers do play the game without issue at this given time (October 19th, 2010). This WILL be fixed so don't feel as if you will never be able to update your drivers again. On the contrary, as mentioned above, it will improve your performance eventually once more updates come out.

1. Add a custom NVIDIA Game / Applications profile for "Fallout: New Vegas"
2. For that profile, change the "Power Management" from "Adaptive" to "Max Performance"
- Duck and Cover forums

So Tempest, please refrain from spreading mindless jibberish about things you dont quite understand. People might be fooled by you and continue having problems despite an easy fix being availble.

I would love to test this however, on my NVcP, there's no "power management"!

This.

I can′t find the setting for power management in the New Vegas profile either. Can anyone help?

I thought the solution of the thread starter might help me as well, since I also use a GTX 285 with the newest drivers.

While I am not having a lot of issues with crashes (have only had a few), should I bother making a setting using NVid CP since I'm using Riva Tuner to OC my gpu?

Yeah if I was having crashing issues I'd definitely NOT be overclocking. That's the first thing I'd UNDO as an experiment to make the game run.

Here is a picture with where you change the settings: http://sv.tinypic.com/r/23nv6h/7

• Open Nvidia Control Panel and click on manage 3d settings
  
• Open the "Program Settings" tab and add FalloutNV.exe
  
• Scroll down to Power Management Mode and change it to Maximum perfomance if Adaptive is enabled.
  
• Enjoy.

Cheers.

Thanks, but I just found out in Nvidia that the "power management" option is only avalable in Windows Vista/7. I'm using XP, so...

This didn't help. I wish it did.

On a side note, my crashes seem to be related to the GECK, crash either right when I open it or just after I close it.

I wonder if this is why I've been so stable. I force my Radeon 5970 to stay at one clock speed all the time, else one GPU downclocks itself while the main one stays at the right speed. This was supposed to be fixed with 10.10, but I still notice it in smaller intervals. >.>

I don't think my GPU uses more than 20-30% when playing Fallout 3 NV. (8800GT) At least when watching what the gpu usage graphs have plotted out in evga precision. Game is still smooth though.

seems its you who doesnt quite understand what power managemant is used for, not my fault bethesda developed a game that cant handle shifting clock speeds, i have mine set at "prefer max" globally anyway since i dont play old games..

/out

Eh, true. But luckily *knocks on wood* I have not had near the issues others in this forum have had. Like I said, I've only had a few crashes; nothing major. I was asking more for preventative maintanance on if I should bother with the NVidia control panel.

Thankyou i think you have solved all my problems. Just been playing a few hours and no crashes, before i did this i was crashing all the time. I also have GTX285 and 260.99 drivers and i was getting driver crashes alot.

Thanks

Hello,
sorry but this is not correct. I check the event log regularly - all the crashes are reported in module FalloutNV.exe (patched version).

There seem to be bugs which corrupt save games (read the Fallout NV wiki), there seem to be bugs with data (all times the crashes are while accessing an illegal memory address, i.e. a hanging pointer).

Since other games run well and stable on my machine, memory tests succeed, and I do not overclock in any way, the reason is FalloutNV.exe, nothing else. At least for me. Crashes hapen more often zoning in and out of New Vegas/Freeside, but they do happen elsewhere too. It also seems, that crashes become more frequent when you progress in the game - would point to the save, since saves grow and if there are corrupt data in saves sometimes, crashes will occur more often with a big save. But only the Devs can find this, since every crash has to be anolyzed, including the save which lead to it.

The tips here are not bad, I tried this dll solution, only it did not do much so i deleted it again, but I do not think its 'evil'.
Other things, like fiddling a bit with threading parameters in the .ini files, may also help a bit, but the fault lies with the engine, which is obviously not well maintained, since it has problems which it already had with Fallout 3. Think of the micro stuttering - its identical to Fallout 3 for me. (Win XP SP3, fully patched, clean, no wonder tools running in parallel to the game, NVIDIA GTX 280, Driver 260.99, Intel Core Duo Quad Core Q9650 @ 3 GHz, 4 MB memory.)

So only the developers can fix these things, and I am sure they are on it. Patience being not my strong side, I play regardless...

:-)

I'm posting to say thank you and let others know this change stopped the crashes due to "the video stopped responding" for me also. The vidoe performance can still be a bit jerky at times but the game is not crashing for me any more.

My basic System info:

Windows Vista 64
Nvidia Gforce 285 GTX, 260.99 drivers
Intel Quad core 2 duo @ 3.6 Ghz
8 GB DDR2 Ram @ 1066 Mhz
Realtek HD Audio (onboard)

I hope this helps others too.

P.S. I thought I add an observation in case a developer reads this. The crashes due to this problem happened by a large margin mostly when accessing the swap items interface (containers, merchants, etc.) often in a short period of time.

I tried this yesterday. But for some reason I still get CTD, stutters, freezes, and the weird lag that sounds like a broken record every time i interact with something. All this was after a format (secure erase- zero filled HDD), and clean install of Win 7, with absolutely nothing installed on the comp other than the drivers new and old. Still get all of the above, everytime i try something new a new bug pops up.

Glad it worked for some though, its a start.