Hey
@Starling6, I used to have the same issue until i changed my GMOD bit rate, now I play in 7-hour sessions with no crashes I hope this helps.
This defo helps with fps, loading times and in general makes the game run better but there are some other steps you can take to reduce lag and stutter.
When you are logged onto the server and experiencing lag check the task manager to see how much of your resources gmod is actually using. If its something like 10% what you can try to do is increase the graphics if you play on low. This can sometimes make your pc utilize more resources which in turn improves performance. This might work, might make it worse. Experiment.
It also helps having the game installed on an ssd, this improves loading times, makes the game run smoother becuase everytime it tries to loads something in its way faster on an ssd than an hdd.
You can also close all backround applications and uninstall or disable the xbox game service which is passively running an overlay on your game, disable any recording software and close out of ts/discord.
I also recommend making sure your system drive has at least 100gb of free space or at least as much as possible. You shouldn't have anything on the system drive other than windows itself if possible.
Another thing to check is whether your pc is thermal throttling as long gaming sessions tend to heat the pc up even with good cooling. You can find tutorials on how to do this on youtube.
Regardless of whether or not your pc is thermal throttling most manufacturers limit your pc fans to 80% as a maximum by default. You can raise this limit in amd using the adrenaline edition program or on nvida through msi afterburner
If you wish to improve the performance of your computer in general you can use some third party tools like Winutil which removes unnecessary windows programs running in the backround that you will probably never use or even notice but take up valuable processing power. Using this tool you can remove cortana, disable telemetry tasks(Windows collecting data about you for advertisers) and much more. Ofcourse whether or not you wish to trust third party tools is up to you. Heres a github link to the win10debloater tool.
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
ALWAYS BE CAREFUL WITH WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD AND FROM WHERE YOU DOWNLOAD IT FROM. IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BE VERY CAREFUL WITH TOOLS LIKE THE ONE MENTIONED ABOVE!
