I have a GTX1060 6GB. I'm still running it at stock clock speeds, so an overclock might be responsible for the performance delta. I also run high settings.
I probably won't, as it's very rare that I use many traffic vehicles. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
I would reccomend to get at least a Ryzen 5 3600 or higher and pair it with 16GB or higher of RAM. Beamng is more Cpu intensive so I would say to get a Cpu upgrade first. If you wanna pair it with a a better gpu I would say to maybe get like a Gtx 1660 or higher. Right now this costs probably like $500-$700.
Beamng will set the limit to the number of cores you have, but if you have hyperthreading, you can spawn more without affecting performance