[andrewas]

1) The first screen on startup comes from the video card, not the PC. The RAM size you need is given on the next screen. Its the one that counts up freom zero, and its given in Kb, not Mb. Divide by 1024.

2) This is called overclocking. The risk is that by running your computer overspeed, it puts out more heat. If your heatsinks and fans can remove this heat fast enough to keep the processor stable, its safe enough. If your processor gets too hot, its not. If your going to go further that you already are with this, be very careful and go one notch at a time. Look for the prime95 program, it has a torture test which is designed to show when the processor is running beyond its limits. A few hours of that every time you up the overclock will show you how far you can go. Pay attention to temps as well, I would make an effort to stay below 50C loaded. CPU power is not that essential to NWN anyway, and you should already be well past the HotU specs.

3) The Riva TNT 2 is from the second generation of 3d accelerators. Hardware T&L didnt become available until much later than that. If you want to run modern games, this old graphics card is the primary component to upgrade.

4) Depends on what you have and what the motherboard supports. If you have a free slot of the appropriate type, you can add new RAM. I would need to know more about your system to tell you what type to buy. More on this in point 7.

5) This is quite probably the single easiest modification you can make to your computer. Ground yourself before touching anything in the comp, and check the directions first (in your mobo manual and ususaly comes with the RAM as well) and (almost) nothing can go wrong.

6) Thats just the specs. Probably generic. Crap, in other words. But whether its worth paying extra for kingston or corsair high-quality stuff depends on whether you have the knowledge/desire/patience to tweak all the settings in your BIOS to get the absolute best performance from every component.

7) Yes, PC133 is faster than PC100. But if you put PC133 in a machine that dosent support it, it will run at the lower speed. The reverse is not true. PC133 is cheapest, so buy that if your going for SDRAM.

DDR RAM is a different memory standard. It sends data twice on each clock pulse, effectively doubling the speed. It also has more pins that SDRAM, and a different socket. So you can't use the wrong type.

RDRAM is yet another memory standard, and has yet another socket.

You motherboard may support both SDRAM and DDR, in which case get DDR but remember you can only run one type at a time.

8) MX! Burn it, Buuurn it!. Im only half kidding. MX cards are the lowest-end cards in their respective series. The Geforce4 MX isnt even a proper G4, its basicaly a faster version of the G2. Not bad cards, but for any machine intended for more than office work, I would recommend something better. You should be able to get a Geforce4 TI of some description for a little more money, and that is a sold card that does have hardware T&L. But it dosent have the latest DX9 features, for which you need something from the GeforceFx line. And GeforceFX is a minefield, some really bad cards in there. For NWN though, a Geforce4 Ti is a good bet.

Theres also the competing ATI radeon cards, which use a naming system that drives me nuts, and have compatability problems with NWN.

9) Whats that in real money? But I think thats an OK price, if only a G4MX was worth owning.

Find your system manual, there are two things you need to find out. First, do you have an AGP4X slot - without one, you won't be able to upgrade your graphics card significantly (although there are PCI versions of most cards, hard to find sometimes though). Second, what types of RAM does your motherboard support.