As someone who played Oblivion on a mediocre PC, I had to do a lot of editing of the ini(or equivalent file, it's been a few years), I recall there being a cell pre-loading/caching setting, as about 90% of the freezing occurs in "the Mojave wasteland" IE; outside, where there will be the most cells available to cache, it seems pretty reasonable to assume the game is caching more cells than the PS3 can cope with.

Is changing this as easy as it is on PC? All you have to do is change one entry of one line on the PC. A 4 second job at most.

I think I'll just return or sell my ps3 version and just get goty for the pc when that comes out. It's the users that make this game shine.
They should give copies away to the modding community.

I wish I could say I understand exactly what cell caching is (the concept) but I think you're on something here.

Since Fallout 3, I have got accustomed to stop using the controller at the slightest hint of frame drop. A good hint is seeing the hard disk light flash very fast. (BTW My PS3 is the old 40gb no PS2 engine, that I've upgrade the hard disk for a 250Gb/5400RPM).

What I have notice in New vegas is that when this happen (and I stop going forward just fast enough for not freeze) is that many "far objects" graphics are loading and updating. They first appear low-res and if you let the PS3 caught up with the loading, you see thoses elements details and textures grow.

Another thing I have notice, is the baddest freeze I get, is when multiple audio "pvssyr" are heard. You know, thoses background voices in populated areas. When some creepy music combine with that pvssyr (like what I hear in West Vegas at night, combined with the pvssyr) I can't do anything. Except sometimes I get to make a save. If I reload right away, sometimes it does the trick. To be Honest, sometimes I have to quit the game, close the console, restart the console and the game, and then it works. It's like...Something, a process, hang on and take too much ressources. Is it happening in RAM, is it just too many things loading up at the same time, the console can not take all of it and it freezes... I wish I knew.

heh, I was thinking the same thing... and was wondering if making the individual cells smaller
would minimize the problem a bit... but now I'm thinking it's a lot more than that, at least with NV..
buggy scripts, bad meshes, missing textures, poorly executed audio.. man, did I leave anything out??? lol

Nope, it's gonna take more than just a patch to fix this monstrous heap of problems, at least on PS3 anyways..

On my PC the game runs fine with little to no problems...

But on a PS3, a machine that has a fraction of the resources, well....

I'm not waiting... gonna take this back to store and trade in for something else...
not happy since I was really looking forward to playing it on PS3...

but there are a lot of other cool games that play smooth and problem-free...

M