What does "2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz" mean?

Woah. Ryan's answer is not completely correct.

CPUs need a clock to work. these are electronic components that create a very precise frequency on which all the other electronic parts synchronize with. a faster clock speed means that the basic tasks that a CPU does run faster. a single core 1 GHz CPU can do 1,000,000,000 tiny tasks in 1 second. dual core can run 2,000,000,000 tasks in 1 second. that doesnt mean the tasks are being completed quicker, it means there are more tasks running at the same time.

modern CPU's can vary their clock speed. this is done to decrease energy consumption and heat generation at low loads. this is especially important with laptops since they have much higher energy and temperature restrictions. the base frequency of your CPU is the lowest speed at which it will run. when you aren't running anything your computer will be running at this speed. your max speed (turbo boost) is the highest speed at which the CPU will run. this is activated automatically, you don't have to do anything to get it to work.

overclocking as Ryan suggested is when you bypass the factory set clock speed limits and raise them on your own. this is done to increase performance at the cost of higher temperatures and more energy use. the world clock speed record CPUs got so hot so fast that they needed liquid helium being poured on them to keep them running.

if you arent gaming a lot, a higher clock speed will do very little to increase your performance. instead, try to find faster RAM. in most cases, your CPU is so fast that it spends most of its time waiting for data to reach it (a core i7 at 3.5 GHz can do 28,000,000,000 tasks in one second) faster memory allows your CPU to run more efficiently letting you multitask better. not more multitasking, better multitasking. for more multitasking you should get enough ram that you are never at maximum.

another upgrade would be a solid state drive. with CPUs being so fast, i've already mentioned that they wait around doing nothing a lot. CPUs have many different memory spaces. the registers are very tiny and extremely fast memory spaces built into the CPU used to run tasks. then the cache which is still built into the CPU is larger, slower memory used to store code and data ready to be processed. there are 3 levels of cache. L1, L2 and L3. each level is slower and larger than the previous. past that there is the system memory or RAM. RAM is many many times larger than the cache and also many many times slower. RAM is used to store information used in running programs. now all these memories are volatile meaning that as soon as you take away their source of electricity (turn off the computer) they will be completely erased. in order to save stuff we need non volatile storage. this is where hard drives come in. hard drives are once again many many times larger and slower than the system's RAM but they hold data even after being turned off. a faster hard drive greatly increases computer performance because it decreases the time that it takes for programs to pass their information down from storage to RAM and then faster RAM speeds up the transfer time to the CPU. a Solid State drive is a much faster type of storage device. rather than having spinning platters like a CD player, they have transistor based storage like a USB stick. this is much faster at moving information around since you dont have to wait for moving parts to transfer information.

SSDs are the single best performance upgrade you can add to a computer. the increase your speed at bootup and opening programs and files. it will make slow computers seem faster than newer more expensive models since a constantly working slower CPU is still faster than a barely working fast one.

if I were you i wouldnt bother with the faster CPU and focus more on RAM and hard drive speed. an i7 is already enough to run most things with ease. instead its a better idea to speed up the parts of the system that are slowing you down. from the looks of it, you probably dont need more RAM either, just faster RAM and storage will make your computer amazingly fast. an i7 with a good solid state drive an fast RAM can turn on in as little as 10 seconds. I have a 2nd generation i7 with a solid state drive and I can turn on my computer, log into my windows account, open up Chrome and load facebook, hotmail, youtube, google, and yahoo answers in about 30 seconds total. if I had chrome on startup with those pages as my home pages and no password to put in to log in to windows, this time would be much lower.

1

The turbo boost is just what the speed would be if it were to be overclocked. For every 1 ghz is one process per second. So if you were to have 3ghz that would be 3 processes per second. Now with multi core computers you would times that speed per every 1 core. So if you were to have 4 core intel core i7 at 3ghz that would mean your computer is doing 12 things every second. At this time and age that is pretty damn good.

~good luck

Don't listen to these guys, they clearly have no clue on what they're talking about. I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. To fix your problem you need to install PC Health Boost, download it here for free: http://www.healthboostpc.com/

It's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate; it's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than normal. Install it, hit run and problem solved. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes.

Dont listen to the person above, they can claim what they like but thats bloat ware at best and malware at worst, dont download it.