Question 1

I recently purchased this memory package, after installing it it would not clock to advertised speed or even close to it. After further investigation I was able to clock this memory to 1333Mhz and pulling up CPU-Z I have found the chip-set to be PC3-10700 and not the advertised PC3-17000!  I would like to know how to rectify this issue and get what I had paid for?

Accepted Answer

I found this article useful to explain different timings - google "MSI DDR3 Memory Timings Explained"
It also mentions that most ram sold today that is labeled > 1600 is actually just overclocked 1333.  This is also true of this Team kit.
It really depends on your mainboard more than anything else.  If you buy a board that supports 2133, then in the BIOS it should have an option to load the XMP (extreme memory profile) and then this ram will work at 2133.  My particular mainboard only supports 1866, and this ram runs fine for me at 1866.

Question 2

Team group changed the name from orange to gold to increase the price? i.e. purchased 2x8GB orange w/AFAICT IDENTICAL specs yet those were c. $20 cheaper a couple of weeks ago... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313409

Accepted Answer

can't seem to find any "gold" named on newegg now to compare, but at the time I bought these, I believe the more expensive DIMMs had slightly better (lower latency) timings.

That would only be useful if you plan on overclocking.

I run these at 1866 because that's the highest my board supports.  (They were actually cheaper than other kits rated at 1866 and 2000.)

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