There was and is a lot of discussion what you need more – powerful CPU or GPU. It's simple – you need the fastest possible IPC CPU because game uses DX9/OpenGL engine i.e. more cores won't help you at all and CPUs with bad IPC (AMD and lower clocked Intel ones) are hit hard.

Do not use mods which mess with traffic frequency, especially those which increase it. It's the fastest way to destroy FPS and no options will help you. More AI traffic, more CPU gets destroyed.

I changed from Radeon HD 7750 to RX 470 and there is no frame rate difference playing in 768p, 1080p and 1440p because game is heavily CPU bound.

If you have 4 GB RAM, start as 64-bit.
If you have Radeon card, use always DirectX as they are very bad in OpenGL.
If you have GeForce, try OpenGL, maybe you can have better performance.

Right click → Properties → Set launch options…

Command is obviosly for skipping intro.

This is the most taxing setting in ETS 2 period. They are everywhere! The main problem is even you you put shadows to low inside game, you will still have bad performance. Go to My Documents\Euro Truck Simulator 2 and open config.cfg:


This is insane level for low shadow texture size! Just go down to at least 512, I even put 64 but it has diminishing returns after 512. My fps was boosted for ~50%! Shadows will now look really poor, but who cares? There are many other things which should look better because they are important.

There are also fake shadow (SSAO?). Will it help? It should be. Change to 0:

After reading SCS forum and testing myself, this is the second most taxing graphics feature. It's heavy CPU dependant just like shadows. It can nosedive fps and cause massive stutter especially at large intersections when it starts to load. Low or off.

I think this is obvious. Use 100% or lower. Higher values are only if you have much more powerful GPU. Game looks drastically better if you use higher scaling but on weak GPUs it will introduce a lot of stuttering.

After shadows and grass, the third most taxing setting. I use medium.

Here are the all other settings. Your truck (both indise and outside) and AI vehicles will look great and you'll have butter smooth experience. If your graphics card has lower than 1 GB of VRAM, lower textures to medium.

Just never use in game anti-aliasing (MLAA) because it's very bad. Use NVIDIA Inspector or AMD Radeon Driver to force proper AA. Be warned if you have weak GPU don't use it as it will introduce stuttering.

1) Use Vsync if you have a lot of screen tearing but only if you can maintain stable 60 fps outside cities.
2) Otherwise frame limit is better solution. There is Frame Rate Target Control in Radeon Crimson Driver. Go into Gaming and find ETS 2 profile.

For GeForce cards there is Adaptive Vsync.

This is not my solution. Original thread in Steam community.

I had frequent stuttering but after this, it rarely happens.
So if your game is not on C drive (assuming My Documents is there as is by default):
1) Right click → Properties → Set launch options…
-homedir e:\ (where is your game located)
2) copy entire Euro Truck Simulator 2 folder into root of drive (in my case e:\)

From now on game will only use new folder.

Enable HPET in BIOS and Win 7.[www.neowin.net] You have to test yourself. If you don‘t see any positive change, check other games because it can help in other one. If you see worse results, disable it.

If you have a lot of mods like me and relatively weak GPU, you can't completely eliminate stuttering. They "eat" VRAM like crazy. My stuttering is now completely gone but I changed from HD 7750 to RX 470. 1 vs 4 GB VRAM makes huge difference. There are still fps drops, but it doesn't sttuter any more.