Yes, it does work in dual Cores. My rig is:
Intel CoreDuo E6550 Conroe 2.33 GHz
Motherboard Gigabyte P35-DS3L LGA775
4 GB RAM DDR2 1066 MHZ
EVGA Nvidia GTX580 1.5 GB VRAM DDR5 Drivers 266.58, DirectX 11
Audigy 2 ZS
Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bits SP1
Monitor HP 2510i 25"
Track IR 4
Joystick Saitek X52
Pedals CH
Definitively this Sim at the moment relies more in graphic power than in pure CPU power. I have moved from an old Nvidia EN8600GT (game unplayable) to a GTX 580 and with the same CPU/MoBo/RAM/peripherals now I get in "Thr Black Death" Track 35/74/0 (Average/Max/Min, MIN happens while loading textures for 2" at the beginning of the track) with these settings in game:
And here in Nvidia Control Panel:
What I have done is to follow all kind of advices and optimization tutorials in this forum and now I can get a decent gameplay, even flying online, although is not totally optimized yet. Optimization process must start by the BIOS, and run along memory, OS, graphics settings and the game itself.
I believe that, once in the future all the now blocked features of the Sim (real weather specially but and many other) have been released, CPU power will become more important, and the time to change MoBo/CPU/RAM will arrive.
I post this in order to help other people to improve, like other posters have helped to me these last weeks.