Graphics Card Settings, BIOS, Drivers

[Wilfred12]

Hi. This is my first post so I hope that I've posted in the right section. I'm not quite sure what type of questions I can post or how specific they can be but this one is about my graphics card.

I'm interested in increasing the performance of my graphics card without compromising image quality. My motherboard is an ASUS CUSL2-C with an Intel 815EP chipset and I have an ASUS V7100 Pure GeForce2 MX graphics card with 32MB of onboard RAM.

First of all, I want to ask if anyone knows what the newest BIOS version available for my card is. I've checked the ASUS website but there doesn't seem to be any BIOSes there. I know the BIOS is flashable because the installation CD came with a flashing program. My current BIOS version according to Windows is 3.11.0018.

Secondly, I want to ask if there is a way to turn on Sidebanding support for my card. Does my graphics card even support sidebanding? Does it need motherboard support? I've tried to use NVMax but the option is greyed out. I've heard that you need special BIOS which refers back to my first question. I know my graphics card supports something called Fast Writes but according to ASUS the Intel 815EP chipset doesn't support it.

Thirdly, my graphics card has a VIP connector. I want to ask what that is for?

Fourthly, in the manual it saids that my graphics card has support for Execute Mode. I'm wondering what this is and how do I check if it is enabled.

Lastly, I'm not sure what driver should I download for my graphics card. I'm currently using nVidia drivers version 30.xx. Since I'm using Windows XP, the ASUS V7100 6.xx drivers that are on the card's installation CD don't work. I've checked the ASUS website and the newest drivers are up to 4x.xx but according to the title they aren't really graphics card specific. The last driver version that has V7100 in the name is 12.xx but these drivers aren't compatible with Windows XP. Also I've tried them and they don't seem to have as many menus as the version 6.xx ones. On the latest manual they appeared to be combined with nVidia drivers. So my question really is whether I should use nVidia's latest drivers or use ASUS's or are they really about the same thing since they both don't seem specific to my V7100 Pure graphics card and they have similar version numbers? Is there a way to use both to get the best of both worlds? I haven't tried the version 4x.xx drivers so I'm not sure if they are still combined with nVidia drivers like the 12.xx ones are.

I'm also open to any suggestions on how to improve my graphics card's performance without compromising image quality. I've heard of overclocking but I'm not really sure how it works or if it is safe.

I realise that this post is long, and I'm sorry for any inconvience. Thanks in advance.

Wilfred12