I had to clear up space specifically to be able to put New Vegas on, my Hard Drive has been getting cluttered after 3 years of use. I did it because the loading screens were ridiculous for me, over two minutes for even just indoor areas, four if fast travelling (not a hyperbole, I would get bored and time it) and my hope was this would fix it. It worked, the load screens are now no longer unbearably long (down to about 30 seconds). Although I still have to wear the magical Old Cowboy Hat to get into the Strip, I'm noticing far less physical glitches like the stringy corpses and enemies getting stuck inside rocks.

Every game I play gets installed. It seems to help with loading times and performance. I did install New Vegas but there didn't seem to be any difference in crashes. Also, clearing the cache and resetting the system did help with the slow downs after long hours of play.