Linux

I'm running a dual client setup on gentoo amd64, everything was fine untill I reactivated my alt. Actually I cannot even say it's playable since everything's flickering and frikin laggy.
I tried deactivating "resource cache enabled" and to lower a bit some rendering value, but I don't want to play with nerf settings. I'm launching the second client simply changing the "/desktop=eve1" string from the command line options, guess that's the right way even if I don't know if in this case all cached resources are shared among the 2 instances thus slowing the system while using them at the same time.
I have a nvidia GTX560Ti Frozr II (quite good gpu I'd say), cpu shouldn't be a problem: phenom II 3.4Ghz and it almost never run at top speed (forcing it to do it doesn't change a thing). Probably ram is the bottleneck: I've "only" 4Gb 1333 and these are my ram stats:

as you can see ram is totally drained and it had to write stuff on swap, which means hard disk (mechanical one).How are things like on your linux boxes? Do you think upgrading my ram could fix? Any other option to try (maybe in some wine setting)?

I just run a "test session" under win7. I used both MSI Afterburner and GPU-Z to check values from the GPU and RamMap to get ram stats. Monitoring the cpu was not necessary, it was always way under 50%

So, the ram is the bottleneck somehow, but.... there's always a but. In win in fact it doesn't get totally drained out. I had a max amount of used ram of 3.3-3.4 Gb, which means upgrading it would be suggested but not strictly needed and I noticed that the 2 eve.exe instances were about 800Mb each. Also, if you clear all cached files from the eve menu, you'll see nothing more than 200-300Mb disappearing, so the real problem is not in the amount of resources used but in the way they are managed.

And the real guilty is............ WINE!! Or me, depends. In fact I was really dubious that running the second client from the same directory was a good idea. This way in fact the 2 clients access the same files at the same time and will keep on writing things in ram which will be immediately overwritten by the other client as soon as it needs them (most likely immediately!!). This was the real bottleneck!!

I decided to give it a try and just did an EVE2 folder in the same WINEPREFIX path I had for the first client (c:\Program Files\CCP) and simply copied EVE1/* into EVE2 (which is almost what I did on win btw). This way I lost 10Gb in my harddisk but I fixed the flickering and the ram draining. In fact the ram usage capped at 3.7Gb, which is exactly how it should be (2Gb by system + 1.7Gb by evex2). I'd also have to check Kwin settings and probably disable some if not all effects, just because they suck too much ram without any real need. Maybe tomorrow.

Finally, the only problem remaining is not due to linux nor wine nor ram, but to CCP!!! in fact when you'll have even just one ship in hangar the flickering will re-appear, if you'll have 2 ships in hangar your card will start boiling, if you'll have 1 or 2 CQ enabled..... keep your credit card ready cause you'll need a new GPU soon!! I also lowered interior effects, interior shader quality and disabled Lod, and left all the rest maxed out. But it's a matter of bad, mostly horrible programming. Sorry CCP's but this is an evidence hard to dismantle, also in win of course!

Sorry for the wall of text but the stress test was very intense and the results hard to synthesize :)

uhm.... interesting

I'm on a pretty fresh gentoo install and KDE as a wm. Immediately after startup I see 600Mb ram used, if I just open chrome they jump to 1Gb at least. I don't have any ram hungy stuff on background (chrome aside).
The problem for what I saw is that wine is not stopping using ram, filling it till it finds some.
Can you tell me how do you launch your 2 eve.exe?

well if you think 2 instances of eve running on wine have no so spectacular impact on 4Gb ram....... ooooki

anyway I have nothing else running in background still I have the flickering and ram filled up till the last bit + those problems when in hangar view. From my experience in linux this is quite a strange behaviour and never happened, probably because I never used wine before I guess.

I'm somehow glad to know it's not happeneing regularly, so it might depend on something on my side (software installed or distro in general), but I'll show you what happens on my gentoo recently installed (so quite clean and thin).

Right after boot (system + kde running):
# free
total 4059192
used 627220 <---- quite ok
free 3431972
shared 0
buffers 11508
cached 302764

I open a shell and 1 eve client, the autopatch updater thing starts to work:
#free
used 2154184 <--- 1.5Gb sucked out so fast.... really? yes really
free 1905008
cached 1660988

I launch a command from the shell to check my wine version (so nothing stressing ram that much) and the EVE updater is "applying patch":
#free
used 3236996 <--- oh gosh!
free 822196
cached 2680524

I did nothing else but waited to the client to restart and actually logged into hangar:
#free:
used 4025372 <---
free 33820
cached 3448168

so, just to resume the situation: I booted 3 mins ago, I never launched any program but wine _one single_ instance and konsole, did almost nothing and I'm out of ram. Btw: wine version is 1.3.32

I don't think my wine is that up to date, perhaps there is a memory leak issue.