The game was made in a time when multicore processors weren't as common. Many players got a reduced number of crashes in Denerim when setting core affinity for the game to a single core. I think this problem is more common in AMD CPUs, but you haven't mentioned your hardware specs, so it may be entirely irrelevant.
If you want a better chance at a solution, post a dxdiag report. "$1100 gaming desktop" is too vague. It's like calling the vet, request they diagnose it over the phone, and not telling whether your pet is a dog or a cat.
To clarify the import issue: The transfer from DAO to DA2 is very straightforward, but the world state for DAI has to be entered manually in the Keep for several reasons, including import bugs that they had in DA2.