Choosing best gear in df

When i loot another peice of veteran gear (just with other seccondary stat how do i compare if the new one is better.
I have equipped a veteran 4/8 gear and loot a new one veteran 1/8 but with other secondary spec.
It seems i have not found the help / description on using the simulatoer, so i use this situation to point me to some help.
Is it better for me to upgrade the new gear?
What i do is the following
Amr shows the difference in the two pieces of gear is 0.4, so i update the new to 2/8 . Then amr shows the exiting one is 0.2 better. That means that the new one is better if i upgrade this to 4/8, so i do it. Note sometimes i do not even have to use a crest, but is there another way to estimate how much better the new gear is at 8/8 veteran with the different secondary stat ?

One way is to use the “add to my bag” search on the upgrade finder. You can try out any variation of an item and see if it would be an upgrade were you to obtain it. The following screenshot shows how you can modify an item in the list to any known variant of that item.