In order to overcome the significant impact of hysteresis on positioning precision when Giant Magnetostrictive Material Actuators(GMAs)are applied to fine positioning, an adaptive PID control method is studied and a multimode PID control method based on Generalized Predictive Control (GPC)principle is established under the condition of the hysteresis compensation. Firstly, the relation between the parameters of PID controller and the parameters to be estimated is derived from GPC principle, and GPC-PID control is realized. Then, for the quibble problem at the beginning stage, the control mode switch condition of multimode PID control is put forward. Finally, a multimode PID controller for the actuator is setup to switch the control modes from the regular PID to the GPC-PID in real time based on PID parameter variability. Experimental results indicate that although the GPC-multimode PID controller extends the consuming time of each execution step slightly by 7 ms, the RMS of tracking error is reduced by 0.066 μm as compared with a Generalized Minimum Variability-Fuzzy PID (GMV-Fuzzy PID) controller, and at the same time, it improves the stability of the beginning stage. These results show that the multimode PID controller can overcome the impact of system disturbance, smooth the beginning status and can be suitable for the precision positioning with high accuracy and real time.