With Windows 10 I always run this command in a .bat file before I start mining:
taskkill /IM /F ApplicationFrameHost.exe
It gets back a little vram from windows.
nice find, but it seems there may be more you have to do.
NOTE: need to run this batch in admin mode
taskkill /im ApplicationFrameHost.exe /f
taskkill /im ShellExperienceHost.exe /f
taskkill /IM dwm.exe /F
maybe run it in a loop or something or run as a scheduled task every so often as win10 seems to sneak back that vram usage after a time.
from this article.
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/windows-10-simple-batch-bat-file-to-free-vram.402022/EDIT have not tried this, my cards are 4gb or above.