Hey guys just thought I would like to say I had issues with F:NV untill I went through and deleted several downloads that I had on my PS3 and just so you know I have an old 40gig that I a year after PS3's came out. Also I did shut off the auto saves and death cam, I can play for 18 hours strait and only have the random choppy freeze thats gone in half a second. So you may just need to clear out some of the game downloads that you don't play and see what happens this trick may work for you also.

What about bugs like lost companions, not being able to take perks, bugged quests etc?

this is because of shoddy QA. don't expect tricks like this to fix half-assed programming. that's what patches are SUPPOSED to do.