New update to driver overclocked my card?

[itszutak]

First off, I am running off of a from-the-box Dell XPS 400, with an nVidia 7800 GTX.

So...After getting sick of getting "Your drivers are out of date!" alerts from steam, I installed the newest drivers for my graphics card.

Before the driver update, I could run Portal at 1024x768 on full max settings at most 15fps.

After the updates, I'm running on full (1280x1024) resolution, and getting over 100fps. Additionally, every time the FPS changes, or exceeds 60, I hear a strange popping noise in my headphones.

Since the newest driver removed the built-in heat gauge, and the one they recommend crashes the drivers, I have no idea what temperature my chip is getting.

Since I have no special cooling system, I have some questions:

-How can I tell if my system is overclocked?
-What FPS should I be getting in Portal with my card?
-Could the driver update make this much of a difference?
-Where can I get a program that alerts me when my chip gets too warm?
-How do I fix the popping noise? Forcing vertical synch reduced the occurance of it, but I still hear it and it really takes away from the Portal experience. <_<
-If my system is overclocked, how do I undo it?

[Jelly]

Try running CPU-Z (http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php) and GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/) to get more information on your card.

I'm pretty sure Source-based games would run well on a 7-series graphics card, but the popping - according to a forum I just glanced at - suggests something is hot. I'm pretty sure that CPU-Z gives system temperatures, so run Portal for a while, then run CPU-Z and see what kind of temperatures you get.

Where did you download your drivers from, the nVidia website or somewhere else?

[itszutak]

The nVidia website, and I'll try that as soon as I can get back to my computer (In around a week >_<)