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Garry's Mod > Guides > s3an's Guides
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GMOD FPS & Stability Guide
By s3an
GMOD FPS & Stability Guide
Guide for Optimization of Garry's Mod, Tips, Tricks, & Scripts to improve your performance, stability, and experience.
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Created by
s3an
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Category: Achievements, Characters, Classes, Co-op, Crafting, Game Modes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Maps or Levels, Modding or Configuration, Multiplayer, Secrets, Story or Lore, Trading, Walkthroughs, Weapons, Workshop
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
10 Dec, 2019 @ 9:35pm
5 Jan, 2024 @ 2:38am
23,208 Unique Visitors
991 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
DOES THIS GUIDE WORK? 
GMOD Prerequisites 
GMOD Installation, Preparation, & Setup 
Comments
DOES THIS GUIDE WORK?

GMOD Prerequisites
Garry's Mod & Other Source Engine Games
Counter Strike Source & Half Life 2 are hard requirements. Most, if not all maps & addons you play on Garry's Mod, they use assets, textures, & models from either Half Life 2 or Counter Strike Source. If you don't have any of the games mentioned, you can go to those sites to download the content from the mentioned games, to fix 'missing textures/checkered textures/purple textures' you will get from not having the content. I will not link any sites that will provide the textures/content for you, you'll have to find them and download content from those sites at your own risk. I am not responsible for whatever happens to your PC.

Here is how to mount your games: (Go to 4:00)
https://youtu.be/Y2Kal95OzGI?t=240
GMOD Installation, Preparation, & Setup
(64-bit Systems only) Running Garry's Mod in 64-bit
Running Garry's Mod in 64-bit mode will dramatically increase performance. Right click Garry's Mod, click "Properties", click the tab "Betas", & select "x86-64 - Chromium + 64-bit binaries".

Disable Fullscreen Optimizations & Override High DPI Scaling for Garry's Mod

hl2.exe (\steamapps\common\GarrysMod):

gmod.exe (\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\bin):

In-game configuration of Garry's Mod
Basic configuration of the options:
  1. Keyboard: Click "Advanced" & Check "Enable Developer Console".
  2. Mouse: Check "Raw Input" & Adjust Mouse Sensitivity to your preference.
  3. Audio: Speaker Configuration should be either "Headphones" or "2 Speakers".
  4. Video: Resolution & Aspect Ratio should be set to your native resolution, & use Full screen.

Advanced Video Settings Configuration
Under "Video" tab in options, click on the lower right "Advanced" to open this menu.
  • Model Detail - High (Some addons can be broken if this is set lower, however if you have a bad PC, then go lower.)
  • Texture Detail - High ("Very high" texture detail is highly not recommended for RP servers.
    If your PC is bad, go Medium or Low.)
  • Shader Detail - High (Low if your PC is bad.)
  • Water Detail - Reflect All (If your PC is bad, go "Reflect World" or "Simple Reflections".)
  • Shadow Detail - Medium (If your PC is bad, go Low as it disables shadows.)
  • Color Correction - Enabled (If your PC is bad, go Disabled.)
  • Anti-Aliasing - 4x MSAA (8x MSAA is overkill, and if your PC is bad, go 2x or None.)
  • Filtering Mode - 16x (If your PC is bad, go lower.)
  • Wait for vertical sync - Off
  • Motion Blur - Off
  • Field of View - 90.00 or 100.00
  • Multicore Rendering - On
  • High Dynamic Range - Full (Some maps require HDR to be on.)

Enabling Multicore Rendering & Other Optimizations + Launch options
Enabling "Multicore Rendering" is an illusion in Advanced Video Settings, so we have to enable it through the console, or better yet a configuration file that will load the settings & save them to your config + saved in your user configuration cloud.
Right click the game, click "Properties", click the tab "Local files", click "Browse Local Files", then go to "garrysmod/cfg and right click autoexec.cfg & click open with Notepad or Notepad++. Copy & paste the following commands into "autoexec.cfg":

// Multi-core rendering settings gmod_mcore_test 1 mat_queue_mode 2 cl_threaded_bone_setup 1 cl_threaded_client_leaf_system 1 r_threaded_client_shadow_manager 1 r_threaded_particles 1 r_threaded_renderables 1 r_queued_ropes 1 studio_queue_mode 1 mat_specular 1 fps_max 999 // Change "999" to the # of your refresh rate if you're on a laptop menu_cleanupgmas // deletes unsubscribed addons host_writeconfig // saves settings to config.cfg

FINAL STEPS

Right click Garry's Mod, Click Properties, & Open "Set Launch Options". Copy & paste the launch options commands into the box:
+exec autoexec.cfg - executes autoexec.cfg every time you start-up Garry's Mod.

+exec autoexec.cfg
118 Comments
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Jaykat 17 Jan @ 8:34pm 
To clarify on that, the models disappear unless I am very close to them
Jaykat 17 Jan @ 8:33pm 
Weird issue. After following the guide any world models for weapons don't render properly, even after removing the changes, the issue hasn't fixed itself.
Even going through each setting one by one didn't make any difference with that either

(On the plus side my fps did actually increase)
squam 18 Nov, 2024 @ 1:30pm 
sorry i ment guide not addon lol
squam 18 Nov, 2024 @ 1:30pm 
this addon is great, though i am having an issue, despite the game being set to the 64 bit beta, i still have to manually launch it 64 bit through steam, running it through any other source will cause it to break the entire game, showing a black screen, then showing my desktop, however i am not able to interact with anything, the game is there, but it just doesn't show, this is extremely annoying when i wanna test out a map in hammer, because i have to close hammer then go launch it through steam
fentdroid 8 Nov, 2024 @ 8:35am 
what exactly does disabling full screen optimization? theres an annoying thing about this guide that maeks some walls invisible when i look away slightly
Саыве 20 Oct, 2024 @ 9:25am 
рполпорл
SKYWOLF 20 Oct, 2024 @ 1:14am 
good :steamthumbsup:
loriANS 14 Sep, 2024 @ 11:08am 
Still working thanks!
Mrbreast 8 Sep, 2024 @ 11:21am 
good
Reycko 1 Sep, 2024 @ 1:49pm 
DO NOT DO WHAT THE COMMENT BELOW ME SAYS.

The tickrate is the speed of the engine. Setting it to 60 instead of the default (66) WILL cause unexpected issues.