updating BIOS on ASUS M2A-VM

I'm planning to do a major reinstall next month and currently, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x86 on my computer. My full specifications are as follows:

- ASUS M2A-VM motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core CPU (codename "Windsor") at 2.2GHz
- 6GB DDR2 PC2-5300 memory
- Integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics
- BIOS: Pheonix Technologies LTD BIOS, Asus M2A-VM ACPI BIOS Revision 0302, dated 03/07/2007

I want to know how can I safely update my BIOS to the latest version? The reason that I'm asking this is that is I'm planning to upgrade into a 64-bit version of Windows 7.

I found out from this link here (ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- windows 7 64 bit on asus m2a-vm) that one user has the same motherboard and he was able to install the 64-bit version of Windows 7 - without any problems.

However, he pointed out that there were issues with the installation and he suggests the following:

1) Update the BIOS to the latest version (if your motherboard's version is not 2302).
2) Clear the RTC RAM by changing the jumpers in the motherboard.
3) Change all drive settings in the BIOS.

What other suggestions can you advise me in this case? Should I really backup my data before updating the BIOS?