It's been a while since I've played any of the SF games, I've really only spent significant time with SFP1 and some YAP2 missions. Probably haven't fired it up in almost a year.

Anyway I've got a new(ish) computer, it's a laptop but has 2.66 Ghz dual core i7 (yes, I said i7 dual core - I know every other i7 is a quad but they called this one an i7. Basically I guess it's an i5 with a bigger L3 cache). It can "turbo" one core up to 3.2Ghz, or both up to 3.06. 4GB Ram, 2x 1GB ATI 4870M graphics cards, 7200rpm HD, Win7 64. 1920 x 1200 resolution RGB LED screen.

Considering getting back into the SF series with the SF2 titles, and I saw that one of the recent updates adds multi-core support. It specifically says though "quad core and higher". So I posted a question on the thirdwire forums asking if it also supported dual cores, and TK replied that it's really coded to support quad or more and dual might not see a benefit. Well, that's really disappointing to hear.....

So, just wondering if anyone is running SF2 games on a dual core after the multi core update, and if they're seeing any improvement over whatever performance they got before. My Graphics cards are DX10, I know that seems to be a big improvement with the SF2 titles. My other question that nobody probably can answer and that's fine is that it's a hyperthreaded dual core - so I wonder if that will look like 4 processors to the games. When I open task manager it shows 4 graphs under CPU.

Also, anyone know if there's any benefit to running dual graphics cards with the SF2 titles? I'm guessing not really, but just wondering.

TK has recently posted about the dual core versus quad core performance. He optimized the code to take advantage of 4 or more cores, so it won't be as efficient with only 2 cores. However, as I play SF2 with an old single core A64 3800, I am sure your dual core will play it faster than mine

I have no personal experience with dual GPUs, but it is my understanding the SF2 is not set up to take advantage of this. But that doesn't mean someone hasn't figured out a way to make it work. You will have to ask around at CombatAce or the Third Wire forums to reach a bigger SF audience for a more informed answer on multi-gpu performance with SF series games.

I've an old laptop 2Ghz Core2Duo and Go7900 and I find SF2 is much faster on my machine than SF1 was. I noticed it mainly in WOV over Hanoi etc.