I believe you are referring to IO operations for processing purposes, and I'll attempt to give a simplified layman answer.
Assume the processor is a meat-grinder in a factory, and assume RAM, hard disk are like the conveyor belt system feeding unprocessed meat to the grinder to be ground.
Assume the conveyor belt has two parts -> the slow-but-wide part, and the fast-but-narrow part. The former alludes to the hard disk big storage but slow speed, and the latter is referring to memory's small storage but high speed characteristics.
So...
HARD DISK CONVEYOR (WIDE BUT SLOW) -> RAM CONVEYOR (NARROW BUT FAST) -> GRINDER (PROCESSOR)
When your increase your RAM, it is like widening the RAM conveyor, thus the grinder can potentially receive much more at one go for processing.
If your RAM is low, it means that while the RAM conveyor is fast, it is extremely narrow, thus the volume of meat pouring into the grinder is little. At the same time, meat might potentially choke at the hard disk conveyor points (in short meat that is supposed to be on the RAM conveyor in a well-optimized system is actually still on the hard disk conveyor - a.k.a paging/swap file).
To sum an answer all up in a hopefully easy to understand sentence :
The relationship between RAM and processor and why programs run faster is simply because with more RAM, more data to be processed can get to the processor faster.
If the size of the system memory is equivalent to how wide the RAM conveyor is, then the Frontside Bus (FSB) is equivalent to how fast the RAM conveyor goes.
Whew! Hope this answers your question!
No you cannot upgrade Dual Core series to new I3/I5/I7 series, they are newer architecture and as minimum require different socket.
- You can change CPU on majority of laptops, because they are not soldered on motherboard. Obviously you have to stick to the right socket. In his case you can upgrade dual core 1.6 to T9900 3.06 GHz for example.
Here is the forum post where lenovo users report their luck with upgrading CPU of this laptop:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-V-and-Z-series/y510-CPU-Options/td-p/14857
Please buy model of CPU that they report WORKING for your laptop.
You don't need extra cooling system, laptop manufacturers usually put exact cooling systems in all models to cut costs obviously. It costs more to source or manufacture different cooling system than just to use 1 on all models and change only CPU/RAM/HDD specifications.
If you want immediate result upgrade ram first, as was suggested by other members. 1GB of ram is really little today, and ram sticks cost nothing. Though I must say that I run ubuntu server with java/mysql/apache on 2gb and intel ATOM processors and have no problem with speed. You can try mint distribution instead? it has much lighter footprint.
Mysql on SSD is very fast.
Best Answer
I apologize for being too terse, in the comments. Let me expand a little bit.
The Intel link you provided states that your particular core can be served by two types of RAM, DDR3L 1333/1600. They operate at 1300MHz and 1600MHz, respectively. Assuming you have the faster one, you can transfer to one of them 64bits x 1600x10^6 times per second, which equals 12.8GB/s. However,the same Web page states that the core has (at most) two memory channels, so using both of them at the same time will allow you to reach the Max Memory Bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s x2 = 25.6GB/s, the final figure quoted in the document above.
An even more curious case is that of the i7-6700 processor, which can use, as memory banks, even DDR4-1866/2133, with 2 memory channels. Repeating the computation above, 8B per cycle, 2.133x10^9 cycles per second, 2 memory channels, you obtain 34.128GB/s, which jibes with the value in the link, 34.1GB/s.