dual core question as well as performance

[eugenioso]

so ive been tinkering around with my pcsx2 0.9.6

as far as BIOS go, im ok with that. i had to ask a friend for their PS2 to get it and had to do a hell of a lot to get that damn bios. and this bios is old.

anyway, i downloaded the emulator, and installed it, and it came with all the necessary plugins and such, but im having kind of serious performance issues with it. i have God of war 2 (ok ok it was my friend's XD) so i put it into my dvd drive and turned it into an .iso file. so i started the game and not only does it run choppy, it runs slowly as well.
as soon as the game starts proper the background is green, and my controller buttons get all random (i press down and i roll forward. wtf?) even though i configured it beforehand.

everyone is giving their comp stats, so to add relevance, here they are:

Intel core 2 duo cpu E7500 @ 2.93ghz (so thats 2 times for dual core)
3.25 GB of RAM.
ATI Radeon HD 4670 (512 mb ddr3)
Windows XP
directx 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

my 2nd question relates to how can i use dual core drives on pcsx2. i read on Wikipedia that you need to set it to software mode on the graphics plugin to use it, which would by logic make it faster. but instead it goes slower? what do i have to do exactly to use dual core, and if i do need to do something else, would it go faster?

btw, the framerate for the game drops to maybe 30 fps by the time i play, and that is unbearably slow.

[Air]

my 2nd question relates to how can i use dual core drives on pcsx2. i read on Wikipedia that you need to set it to software mode on the graphics plugin to use it, which would by logic make it faster. but instead it goes slower? what do i have to do exactly to use dual core, and if i do need to do something else, would it go faster?

PCSX2 uses 2 cores automatically. Software mode only runs faster on 4+ core systems -- and even then only in specific games and only at low resolution (native res).

btw, the framerate for the game drops to maybe 30 fps by the time i play, and that is unbearably slow.

I have a C2quad @ 3.4ghz and an HD5770 and GoW II runs not much faster. VU Cycle Stealing hacks might boost the fps but will likely cause the game to emulate poorly. Until PCSX2 gets faster -- and it will -- its going to be quite hard to attain full framerates in GoW 2 on your system.