I remember playing the game around release and it was pretty buggy. A good bit of crashing, lockups etc.

I thought by now this would have improved. It's worse, by far. Instead of crashing once every hour or so, I crash every 10 minutes or so. And now today I tried loading the game up and keep getting unable to intiatie renderer bug.

I have the most up to date drivers for my gfx card(it's like a 9600 gt or something) and windows is up to date. So ya... makes zero sense. My rig hasn't changed at all since release.

I have been on this forum since New Vegas was released. Most of my posts are old - and if you look through them you will be able to see much of the same problems and anger. The truth is - New Vegas is buggy, was always buggy. There are 3 causes for this. One is the gamebryo engine, the other was the low quality assurance that was used during its delvelopement, and lastly was the politics/money issue.

Having said that, it is possible to get this game running stable if your system is above the minimum requirements. The problem is, most users are unwilling to do what it takes to get this game running. And I have to admidt, the average user should not have to go through all of this.

1) Fallout New vegas hates Non-Windows windows codecs. You best bet for getting around this is a fresh install of windows ( Although there is a program at New Vegas Nexus that claims to remove them ). And then make sure you update the video, sound, windows platform, and direct X. Do not install third party programs, especially any video, sound programs.

2) Regardless of what others say. Fallout New Vegas has issues with some quad cores. There is a .ini fix you can use (search for it) that was used for fallout 3.

3) The Gamebro engine suffers from Micro stutter or what can be called Frame Skipping. Some people do not notice this, others like me, see it plain as day. This is a inherent falt in the game engine itself. To get rid of this, you will need a 3rd party program like, " New Vegas Stutter Remover " which can be found at New Vegas Nexus.

So what did I personally have to do to get Fallout New Vegas Running ???

I traced my crashes to 2 things:

1) I had Non-windows codecs on my system from video, sound editors. This was causing generic random crashes. I reformated, and reinstalled my OS - this problem went away.

2) Added .ini fix (Sets CPU to only use 2 cores). This got rid of the specific crashes I was getting in outside areas in the game.

3) Installed New Vegas Stutter Remover. This got rid of the frame skipping that is most noticeable on side to side movement.

In the End, It took me a good long while to get this game running to the point that I could even play it (Months). It was not until the most recent patch that I even started really playing it. Its really sad, because Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 never had the issues that I found in Fallout New Vegas ( And all these games use the gamebryo engine ).

Don't expect Bethesda/Obsidian to completely reslove all the remaing issues. They simply won't. Many people got shafted on this game and all that Bethesda/Obsidian can offer is excuses or we are working on it.

The Truth Be Told - Bethesda is ditching the gamebroy engine in favor of a new engine they are building from scratch along with so-called promises of better Quality control and testing in the future. Time will tell. . .

However, I still feel we should at least be compted with some free expansion packs for Fallout New Vegas. They Took our money, shafted us, set the common users to Beta (Late Beta) test their game, and then let us wait for the numerous patches ( Many of which caused more issues than they resolved ).

Can anyone say , " Gothic 3 " ........

Are you kidding FO3 was way worse at launch. It used to crash on my at least once an hour if I was lucky and when they did finally fix the crashing they broke all of the vats perks and had a huge delay when going into vats. They also took a very long time to fix those vats issues. I'm not saying that New Vegas is stable by any means. I just had a crash and one of the worst bugs that I had at launch is still present but I wouldn't call FO3 and especially Oblivion the poster child for what a polished game should be.

Yeah it's time to do away with the Gamebyro engine.