Is there a way to assign cores in the .conf file for Windows (odd/even vs. linear)?
Not in the conf file, but on linux you can use the "util-linux" package to adjust cores/threads/affinities of a process.
sudo apt-get install util-linux
You can then use the command
taskset:
taskset -cp 0,4 9030
moves process with pid 9030 to cores 0 and 4