fallout: new vegas is a buggy piece of trash

[pickled_heretic]

i started playing two days ago and i've had 5 crashes, 1 of which was a terminal system crash and another corrupted one of my save files (thankfully i had a recent backup).

not only that but something is wrong with its performance. i recently upgraded my graphics card to a 460 gtx and i'm getting very poor performance when compared to its precursor, fallout 3. I had to turn it down to medium and i'm still getting significant framerate problems. I had a worse graphics card when I played FO3 and i'm getting worse fps now with much worse settings.

hardcore mode was supposed to increase the difficulty of the game, but the only thing it really does is make inventory management a pain in the ass since ammo weighs so much. it doesn't make the game any more difficult beyond having to spend a half an hour managing my inventory for every hour i play.