specs for multimon triple monitor config

[jeefAD]

Hey, all.

On the heels of a 'Technical' thread in an attempt to diagnose some performance/smoothness issues and fps dips, I'm considering buying some new hardware to throw at the problem as no amount of tweaking has panned out...

To help with planning, I'm hoping to get a sense of what others with triple 1080p monitor setups (in-game resolution of 5760x1080) are running to achieve sufficient performance/framerate with current game version/DLCs?

Just a little backstory: Current rig *was* dual Xeon E5-2650 @ 2.0 GHz + Radeon 470 4GB and was pushing triples in Eyefinity for an in-game resolution of 6000x2160 (center monitor was a 40" 4k). That was with a 1.36.* game version, which was after the DX11 transition. Since then I've updated my rig first with an RTX 2070 8GB, then triple 32" 1080p and finally moving to a single Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.7 GHz. With current game versions/DLCs on a fresh build of Windows 10 and despite the upgrades done, the rig simply isn't keeping the pace in with current ETS2 (or ATS) game versions/DLC. No amount of tweaking or acceptable compromises in IQ settings has made a substantial difference. My only recourse seems to be new hardware at this point...

So, yeah, for those running triple 1080p monitors may you please take a moment and let me know what gear you're running and how it's performing? Your feedback will 100% impact my purchase decisions!

Unless the RTX 2070 is a lost cause (I don't think it is), I would retain the GPU and plan on purchasing a new CPU, board, RAM, case and PSU for now. I am leaning towards Intel 11th-gen at the moment, possibly the i5-11400F unless there's sufficient rationale for a higher spec CPU that ETS2/ATS will directly benefit from.

Also, is there any formal guidance from SCS re: hardware spec and performance? The published "requirements" on Steam are very, very minimal for gaming in 2021 and the apparent complexity present in more recent game versions/DLC.

Cheers and happy trucking!

[The_SimTrucker]

I have an Intel 3770 with a AMD RX590 video card and run an ultrawide monitor in "fake" 3 screen layout in the multimon config file. I get anywhere between 60 fps on empty highways to 35 fps in towns. Not bad for an RX590 card.

If I check the Task Manager the GPU load is not a 100% and the CPU load certainly not at a 100%. My guess is that ETS2 wants to have a single fast CPU core first and only then a fast GPU. ETS2 / ATS is not known for being multi-core optimized.
The single core rating of my 3770 is about the same as your Xeon E5 1620: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... s896vs3859
A new AMD 5600 / 5800 will be about 35% faster in single core speed and that may be the ticket to get a more responsive ETS2.

[jeefAD]

Thanks! Yeah I was impressed with my RX470 at the time too! What res on your ultrawide?

RE: single-core performance, it's interesting. On paper, there's quite a gap in base clocks for say Intel K/KF versus non-K/F models -- say i5-11400F @ 2.6 GHz vs i5-11600K(F) @ 3.9 GHz. Will ETS2/ATS utilize that +1.3 GHz? Don't know. How often will it hit all-core/single core boost and again, will it benefit ETS2/ATS? Don't know.

Paper aside, when you look at some benchmarks the benefits re: gaming are interesting. For example, the following review reveals only a modest gain in gaming between the newer i5-11600K and even the outgoing i5-10400F at stock clocks:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/inte ... i5-11600k/

The relative gaming charts suggest what, a 5-8% gain depending on resolution between these two models? Yes, there are larger gains for other workloads, but that's not relevant here.

It would be great to get some official weigh in from SCS on the topic of performance and what the engine underpinning ETS2/ATS would actually benefit from re: hardware. Maybe a topic for a future SCS blog post? That and/or some direction as to what we ought to turn down to positively support performance without drastically compromising IQ. Balance. Perhaps even some additional graphics/quality settings exposed in-game so we can better mitigate the performance hit of new features/technologies/design elements being baked into the base game and/or DLC?

[Devel021]

My rig is a Ryzen 3600, 32gig ram, with a radeon 5700 running on ultra settings. I haven't increased the scaling and am running 5760x1080 (triple 1920x1080 monitors). I am generally able to get a solid 60 fps but have noticed with the newer dlc's it is starting to drop a little. It generally stays above 45fps and only drops for a short period. what kind of performance are you looking for?

[paulieGTR]

@jeefAD

I run 27" triples @57x10 and multimon2.
I keep vsync enabled @60Hz and don't get any drops.. that is, I never notice at any time that it drops to 30fps.
..and believe me, if it did, i would notice straight away.

fyi... in Assettocorsa, i run my frames capped at 91, just so that it never drops below 90. If it ever were to drop to even 89, I notice it.
You may think that's strange, but if you have your refresh rate at 'even'(not odd) multiples of your display, then everything is fine.
But if my monitor tries to display say the 29frames on top of my monitor's 60, tearing and jerkiness appears and it does not feel as smooth as a
constant 90fps.
29frames doesn't go into 60 and display, quite in the same way as what an extra 30 does.

With that out of the way...
My Graphics card is getting on a bit now and it's the only thing I haven't been able to upgrade.(Waiting for a new 3090 to get released)
But, it's an evga titanX sc with 12gb and it still does pretty well.

Don't get me wrong though, I've had to compromise with ETS2/ATS gfx settings.
I have AO completely disabled and the new 'reflection' setting the lowest it can go(50% iirc).
I've had to turn down 'AA' to 'High' and also keep my mirror settings all at 'medium'.
I have scaling set at 100%.

I also run steam from two shortcuts depending on what i'm doing.
When running steam solely for gaming - I add to the shortcut target and at the end after the double quotes: -no-browser
This stops all the web helpers from loading. After I finish gaming I completely shut down that version of steam.
But say I want to maybe have a look in eg. ETS2/ATS steam discussions, then i'll start the normal steam shortcut.

See when you add the "-no-browser"(without quotes) this disables all webhelpers, meaning you cannot browse anything, but it's great for gaming.
You're games will still be able update, but it's a kind of 'light' version of steam if you will. As i said.. great for 'only' gaming.

There is other ways of temporarily disabling the webhelpers, but every time steam starts.. it will download an update and change them back.
Hence why I use the dev option. ie. -no-browser

Anyways, something else you can do is, search in the config files for a line: "buffer_page_size=10"
Change it to look like below
"buffer_page_size=30"

The config file you're looking for, may be the global config. But if you don't find it there, then check them all because it appears in only one of them.

I have quite long command lines to start both ETS2 and ATS, but since i'm not at my gaming rig now, I couldn't say exactly what they are.
I know that I set the resources to use half of my 64gb sys ram, but the rest and exactly, I couldn't say for sure.

hope this gives you some help ..and hope, at least.
ps. my specs are in my sig.

[mackintosh]

5900X (PBO boosting to 4.9Ghz, mem @ 3600, standard XMP) + RTX 2080Ti (1350/7070), 5760x1080 @ 60fps locked, 400% scaling and everything ultra, some performance issues here and there, but mostly solid.

[paulieGTR]

@mackintosh Are you using Multimon2 in config.?
Reason I ask is because I see so many folks running triples without setting the config and it displays a warped image.

[jeefAD]

@Devel021 Thanks for posting! Performance, well obviously more the better, naturally. Seriously tho, with my current rig rolling down highways >100fps at modest settings or 70-80fps with some scaling is really, really nice. Feels smooth and I can just chill/allow myself to get immersed. Driving into cities and having fps dip into the 50's/smoothness gets choppy doesn't feel so nice and instantly breaks the immersion for me. Depending on the city, I end up having to turn down scaling/IQ to avoid dipping into the 40's and even saw 39fps at one point. Ew. I think maintaining 60fps would be totally fine, but ideally it would have to be with scaling. IMO, these sims NEED scaling to manage the flickering/shimmering...

@paulieGTR Cheers! I totally hear you re: fps/vsync and what the eye can notice. As above, tearing/jerkiness really breaks the immersion for me. Sounds like that TITAN is still workin' hard for you tho! Good stuff. I'll give the Steam tweaks a try, but if you have a sec to reply back with your ATS/ETS2 startup parameters that would be great! I'll give'em a whirl -- I've got 32GB (4x8GB) to spare. I have tinkered with buffers/resource size, but haven't found anything conclusive yet...

@mackintosh Thanks for sharing! Any particular config file, game startup parameters or NVIDIA-specific tweaks you've done to accomplish a mostly solid 60fps at 400%? Or did you just set in-game settings and go? You've def invested in a nice rig and the settings/performance you've noted is where I'd like to be. So maybe throwing more CPU/GPU at the problem is the solution? Man, didn't think I'd have to consider replacing the RTX 2070 already...

[mackintosh]

No, just in-game settings, adaptive v-sync, and the usual command line tweaks (-mm_max_resource_size 44 -mm_max_tmp_buffers_size 484 -mm_pool_size 16384). Throwing more CPU at ETS2 is literally the only way to get better performance with a decent GPU. The 2070 should still be fine for triple screen @ 1080p. You don't want to be buying a new GPU right now

[jeefAD]

Cool, thanks! I'll try with those settings again. When I tried them the first time after the OS rebuild I don't believe I had my PC power plan set to "High Performance" yet and then learned about the NVIDIA "Power Management Mode", which I've since changed from "Optimal" to "Adaptive". Without it, GPU wattage and power % monitored in Afterburner/RTSS would barely budge as the fps dipped. Got a bit of boost and better consistency after those changes.

On the note of CPU... what I still don't fully grasp is that ETS2 doesn't even seem to be fully utilizing/stressing my current CPU, with total CPU load ~30% and a single core hitting maybe 60% or less. Does it just come down to IPC? I did a bit of reading and the gen-to-gen IPC improvement with Zen3 is solid, which could help explain why your 5900X can do a solid 60fps @ 400% scaling (looks so good!) yet @Devel021 still sees some fps dips with a Ryzen 3600 (albeit with the older TITAN GPU). Maybe. It's not likely the extra cores of the 5900X as I understand ETS2 won't leverage them and the clock speeds between the two aren't that far off. That 5900X must scream for other workloads tho!

Leaves me wondering with a new build for those reasons. If I do go 11th-gen Intel, there is a bit of a boost over the 10th-gen and something like the i5-11400(F) is quite cost effective re: gaming compared both the i5-11600 and even i5-11700. So if it's just IPC, that's cool. Or would going with the higher base clocks of a K-series actually benefit ETS2? There's just no point in me spending $ on CPU power that isn't going to help the cause. An i5-11400 is $249 vs the 5900X @ $779 for me.