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Hi all. I want to make a performance guide because I feel like I've tuned my game quite well to the point where I can almost always maintain 100+ FPS, save for some edge cases that only happen on full player count.
THIS WORKS FOR ANY GAME (EXCEPT FOR THE CONFIG SECTION)!!!
My computer's setup is as follows:
Gigabyte B550M Aorus Elite motherboard
Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU
32.0 GB of 3200mHz RAM
Windows 10 Pro Build 19045
Garry's Mod is primarily a CPU-intensive game. I don't mean your CPU will be at 100% all the time, but most of the game will use your CPU instead of your GPU. Your GPU is barely working to render this game because of how simple it is, and it doesn't even get used more when at lower framerates (don't ask me why, I'm not that smart). Because of this, I set my game to use a high priority on both the CPU and the I/O side of things. I've also tried disabling SMT but have noticed little to no difference, which makes SMT a personal preference when it comes to Garry's Mod.
To do this, I use Process Lasso. It's a free program on the internet that is essentially a more advanced task manager, which lets you change a lot more things about running processes. The same company that made Process Lasso also made a program that unparks your CPU, which I use as well. ***It's called ParkControl, and it will help you get more performance out of your CPU by disabling parking on your CPU (parking is when cores of your CPU are put to sleep when not being used).***
Now, when you have Process Lasso open, find gmod.exe when it's open. Right click on it and navigate to CPU Priority and set it to High in the Always tab. Then do the same for I/O Priority. If you'd like to disable SMT, go to CPU Affinity and press Disable SMT. You can also select Induce Performance Mode on gmod.exe, which does something I guess, I don't know.
Now, I'm assuming everyone is using the 64-bit branch of Garry's Mod, so for these next steps make sure you're on that branch or else this won't apply. Navigate to your game's directory by right clicking on Garry's Mod in your Steam library, and clicking on Properties. Then, in Properties, click on Browse Local Files. Once the folder opens, go to the "bin" folder, then "win64". Look for gmod.exe in that folder, and right click on it to go to Properties. Once in properties, navigate to the Compatibility tab, and press "Disable fullscreen optimizations". Then click on "Change high DPI settings". Click on "Override high DPI scaling behavior.", then press Ok, then Apply, and then Ok. This will ensure that alt-tabbing in and out of the game is smooth, and will also provide some performance boost, be it negligible or noticeable.
You can also make sure your GPU works harder in general for Garry's Mod. Open your search bar on the taskbar. Search "Graphics settings", then click on it. Ensure that HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) is on, then click on Browse and navigate to your game's directory, then "bin", then "win64", and select gmod.exe. It should show up in the list. Now click on it, so that the Options button appears, and click on it. Then select High performance and press Ok.
Now for the config section. I have my own autoexec that is a mishmash of commands that give me a performance boost one way or another. If you'd like, you can use mine. Or you can look for others on the internet and use those. These don't work for everyone, but it should work for most people. To install an autoexec, ensure the file itself is called autoexec.cfg. Then navigate to your game's directory using the same method from the previous section. Then navigate to garrysmod\cfg, and put the autoexec in there. Then, go to your Steam library, right click on Garry's Mod, then click on Properties. You should see a command line text field where you can put in commands for launch options. Put "+exec autoexec" in there to ensure the autoexec actually executes every time you open your game.
This should be all that you have to do to get more performance in Garry's Mod. There are more things you can do like finetuning your autoexec or video settings based on your own system, but that's all based on your specific setup and personal preference.
***There are alternatives to ParkControl like setting the actual flag for CPU parking yourself using CMD (this may be preferred for some), for more details look at the guide at the very bottom, specifically post-install.md and CTRL+F "parking"
ADDENDUM:
THIS WILL NOT MAKE BAZAAR RUN AT 2000000 FPS FOR YOU. BAZAAR LOW FPS IS A MAP ISSUE, NOT A COMPUTER ISSUE.
PROOF
ADDENDUM ADDENDUM:
THIS GUIDE IS ALSO VERY GOOD FOR COMPUTER OPTIMIZATION SPECIFICALLY REGARDING GAMING
THIS WORKS FOR ANY GAME (EXCEPT FOR THE CONFIG SECTION)!!!
My computer's setup is as follows:
Gigabyte B550M Aorus Elite motherboard
Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU
32.0 GB of 3200mHz RAM
Windows 10 Pro Build 19045
Garry's Mod is primarily a CPU-intensive game. I don't mean your CPU will be at 100% all the time, but most of the game will use your CPU instead of your GPU. Your GPU is barely working to render this game because of how simple it is, and it doesn't even get used more when at lower framerates (don't ask me why, I'm not that smart). Because of this, I set my game to use a high priority on both the CPU and the I/O side of things. I've also tried disabling SMT but have noticed little to no difference, which makes SMT a personal preference when it comes to Garry's Mod.
To do this, I use Process Lasso. It's a free program on the internet that is essentially a more advanced task manager, which lets you change a lot more things about running processes. The same company that made Process Lasso also made a program that unparks your CPU, which I use as well. ***It's called ParkControl, and it will help you get more performance out of your CPU by disabling parking on your CPU (parking is when cores of your CPU are put to sleep when not being used).***
Now, when you have Process Lasso open, find gmod.exe when it's open. Right click on it and navigate to CPU Priority and set it to High in the Always tab. Then do the same for I/O Priority. If you'd like to disable SMT, go to CPU Affinity and press Disable SMT. You can also select Induce Performance Mode on gmod.exe, which does something I guess, I don't know.
Now, I'm assuming everyone is using the 64-bit branch of Garry's Mod, so for these next steps make sure you're on that branch or else this won't apply. Navigate to your game's directory by right clicking on Garry's Mod in your Steam library, and clicking on Properties. Then, in Properties, click on Browse Local Files. Once the folder opens, go to the "bin" folder, then "win64". Look for gmod.exe in that folder, and right click on it to go to Properties. Once in properties, navigate to the Compatibility tab, and press "Disable fullscreen optimizations". Then click on "Change high DPI settings". Click on "Override high DPI scaling behavior.", then press Ok, then Apply, and then Ok. This will ensure that alt-tabbing in and out of the game is smooth, and will also provide some performance boost, be it negligible or noticeable.
You can also make sure your GPU works harder in general for Garry's Mod. Open your search bar on the taskbar. Search "Graphics settings", then click on it. Ensure that HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) is on, then click on Browse and navigate to your game's directory, then "bin", then "win64", and select gmod.exe. It should show up in the list. Now click on it, so that the Options button appears, and click on it. Then select High performance and press Ok.
Now for the config section. I have my own autoexec that is a mishmash of commands that give me a performance boost one way or another. If you'd like, you can use mine. Or you can look for others on the internet and use those. These don't work for everyone, but it should work for most people. To install an autoexec, ensure the file itself is called autoexec.cfg. Then navigate to your game's directory using the same method from the previous section. Then navigate to garrysmod\cfg, and put the autoexec in there. Then, go to your Steam library, right click on Garry's Mod, then click on Properties. You should see a command line text field where you can put in commands for launch options. Put "+exec autoexec" in there to ensure the autoexec actually executes every time you open your game.
This should be all that you have to do to get more performance in Garry's Mod. There are more things you can do like finetuning your autoexec or video settings based on your own system, but that's all based on your specific setup and personal preference.
***There are alternatives to ParkControl like setting the actual flag for CPU parking yourself using CMD (this may be preferred for some), for more details look at the guide at the very bottom, specifically post-install.md and CTRL+F "parking"
ADDENDUM:
THIS WILL NOT MAKE BAZAAR RUN AT 2000000 FPS FOR YOU. BAZAAR LOW FPS IS A MAP ISSUE, NOT A COMPUTER ISSUE.
PROOF
ADDENDUM ADDENDUM:
THIS GUIDE IS ALSO VERY GOOD FOR COMPUTER OPTIMIZATION SPECIFICALLY REGARDING GAMING
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