What settings should my ram be at?

[Dosage]

Hi, Ive never messed with my ram settings before so I am not quite sure what they should be set at. I have 2x512mb pc3200 Corsair value select ( i know not the best) ram. I went to the BIOS menu and found the mem clock was at ddr266 , I tried 333 and 400 and both times my computer booted up normally and seemed to run well. I have an AMD 3400+ and an MSI k8t Neo mobo. What's the b enefits of running at higher mem speeds and what should I set them to. Please excuse my lack of knowledge as far as RAM. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Sophisticated]

your RAM is rated to run @ 400MHz Which is PC3200...your memory is underclocked right now...so its best to put it to 400MHz which is 1:1...your in 3:2 divider right now so yeah...

[djs488]

yeah i find it odd that it was ever set to 266. pc3200 ram = ddr400. the benefits? haha, the mhz is the speed at which information can go to and from the memory, through the FSB, to the cpu. thus, u would want it as high as possible. some hefty overclockers like to buy pc4000 even though their fsb only runs at 800. they anticipate running the fsb higher so that it can take advantage of that pc4000.