Garry's Mod is a single-threaded game.
What does this mean?
Garry's Mod takes a step by step approach to running the game. So, the game will only perform one process at a time and then move on to the next process. This means that one CPU thread is being used while running Garry's Mod. This is why single-threaded/single-core performance is a key factor in your FPS in Garry's Mod.
What about the notorious multi-core command?
For some people, this works very well, but for others it causes instability and game crashes. This is very CPU specific, sometimes even relying on other hardware components. The multi-core command in just a sneaky and inefficient way to try and make the game multi-core reliable. However, it does not change the fact that the game is still single-threaded. All it does and tries to split the single processes to more cores, but it still only performs one process at a time.
So how can I improve my performance with that information?
The most common answer is buy the best Intel CPU you can find. While this answer could sound credible because of the Intel single core performance, it is not always the best way to improve performance. What we want is the best single-threaded performance from our CPU. Going with the "best" Intel CPU is not appropriate now because most of Intel's 8th and 9th rely on multi-core performance with 6-8 cores. The way that we can get the best performance is probably a quad-core high clock speed CPU. The best one I can think of is the
i7-7700k. With this you can even OC it to a even more desirable clock speed with adequate cooling. The 8th is an alright choice because it still has string single-thread performance, but anything of 6 cores won't be adequate for Garry's Mod. Here is a thread explaining this subject better:
https://create.pro/blog/cores-faster-cpu...explained/.
Why does high clock speed matter so much?
Well since Garry's Mod is single-threaded, to get the best performance we need to perform every little process as fast as we can so that it can move on to the next process. The clock speed is one of the main determiners for how fast the CPU will will perform a process.
So is there anything else that will help me gain performance?
Yes, RAM is another way to improve your performance, but it is not the quantity but the quality that matters. The same way with the CPU.
Keep in mind that RAM is not a sure way to improve performance. The RAM stores information that the CPU needs to perform each process. I want to keep this part short because the change can be very minute dependent on what you have. The motherboard and RAM timing and speed is very important for getting information to the CPU. The motherboard needs to be handle the speeds of your RAM while doing it efficiently. Most motherboards are perfectly fine and you won't see much of any performance increase from just a motherboard swap. The RAM
CAS latency is important to how fast the the cycle times are for the RAM to send information to the CPU. using the link provided for CAS latency and the restrictions from the i7-7700k the DDR4-2400 with a CAS latency of 15 would probably be the best.
This is all the information I have in my peanut brain, but if you have any other questions I would love to answer them. Keep in mind, the i7-7700k is not for sure best CPU for Garry's Mod, but it is just my suggestions as spec wise it seems like the most reasonable choice. If anyone notices any mistakes in this. Please let me know.
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