What does Flip really do?

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How does this talk of textures translate to the Max2D commands?

In my current project, I'm drawing a panel made up of nine separate images - 8 border pieces (4 corners, 4 stretched sides) and one central rectangle (which can be just a rectangle, or an image drawn using DrawImageRect).

These are 5x5 pixel images.

How would I maximise speed with this? 8x8 images? 4x4? I presume that the system will create the quad and then apply the image as a texture to that quad, as in Blitz3D?