For me, back when I played (and used to mod) Fallout 3, one particular 'mod' (it's more of a fix) was absolutely essential for the game to keep going without crashing (or freezing).
It was (well, still is) the famous ENB Series fix. It consists of a few files that only need to be placed in the game's installation folder, and then - optionally - one .INI file can be manually edited to activate and/or disable specific features. It can provide some (although limited) graphics-related enhancements. But those can be disabled to just let the 'fix' portion of the mod to be applied to the game. If I removed the fix back when I used to play the game, it would always crash after about 15 minutes or so, or if I was very lucky sometimes it didn't crash and just froze (but still required a forced Ctrl+Alt+Del out of it to end the Task). On a side note, the ENB Series fix was also absolutely required for me with the original (32-bit) version of Skyrim (even non-modded).
Although Skyrim ran much longer without crashes than Fallout 3 did, it still crashed at some point or another. I never tried the ENB Series fix for Oblivion but I bet I would have used it if I had known back when I used to play Oblivion (which also regularly crashed). The ONLY Bethesda game I'm not using it for is Fallout 4. That one is infinitely more stable than all previous games they made (it's 64-bit, it has basically no memory-related limitations which is the major problem of their previous games), with the single recent exception of the re-released 64-bit version of Skyrim.
Anyway, so go there:
http://enbdev.com/mod_falloutnv_v0322.htm
* Going by memory here on the steps to follow *
1) Check at the bottom of that page, there's a download link for a zip file (click on the arrow pointing down).
2) Extract the contents of the 'Wrapper version' folder, and put those files where your Fallout 3 is installed.
3) One of the extracted files should be named " enblocal.ini " (without quotes), open it and check for the line " UseENBoostWithoutGraphics = false " and change the value to true (UseENBoostWithoutGraphics = true). Doing that should only enable the memory-related fixes without changing the graphics of the game.
4) In that same .ini file, now check for the line " EnableFPSLimit = false ", and for that one too change the value to true (EnableFPSLimit = true). And leave the actual FPS limit to 60 (which should be shown to be the case one line below that). The reason why it is recommended to do that is because the dinosaur of an engine that GameBryo is (especially on Fallout 3, but also Oblivion and the 32-bit version of Skyrim) will act absolute bat-shit crazy with physics if your frames dare going above the 60 FPS mark. So to avoid objects flying all around, or clutter constantly banging on the surface they rest on, or to avoid ragdolls behaving erratically and anything else related to the physics system of the game then do limit your FPS that way to 60. And, on a side note, 'limiting' FPS only via normal V-Sync adjustments either via in-game or forced via the NVIDIA control panel (or AMD panel I'd assume, too) does not help. Or, well, I'll speak for me here at least, NOTHING else than doing it via the ENB Series ever truly worked for me in Fallout 3.
Now, if everything is done properly, when you start up the game you should normally have some sort of on-screen confirmation that the ENB Series is active. If you do see that, then you're set. I could simply not fathom playing Fallout 3 without that thing. In fact it would simply not have been playable, purely on a technical level; had it not been for that mod. For me, Fallout 3 (just vanilla, without mods) has been the absolute worst game ever made by Bethesda in terms of sheer instability. With all this said, if you ever experience issues that weren't there WITH the fix installed, then something is wrong (and it's not the ENB Series fix doing it). However, just in case, simply uninstall those files from where your game is installed and everything should be back to 'normal'. If anything bad does happen then do come back to me on this thread in a reply, I'd be curious to see if anything can even go wrong with this (if properly installed anyway).
I would also highly recommend using the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch on top of the ENB Series fix too, if you can bother with it. The more fixes you apply to Fallout 3 the better (and I'm not talking about game-play related mods here, just
fixes). Hope it helps.
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