@mzbe I agree or at least in part. I have said in most if not all of my posts that the drivers are a factor but not the whole story.
However, what has puzzled me is that when running tests on my 3060(12GB) and on my 5060Ti(16GB), with GPU-Z monitoring GPU VRAM, the same test images occupy nearly all the VRAM available on both the GPUs, i.e. 12GB on one and 15+GB on the other
Is this also the case with your “monster” 3090(24GB), i.e. is all or nearly all of the 24GB being used?
So have the new drivers actually fixed or at least improved the situation?
In my experience an image that frequently failed on loading with the previous “latest” driver, no longer seems to be as prone to failure as it was. But as I explained in a rather long post New Nvidia driver 581.57 with PL9 AI Mask fix! - #23 by BHAYT it is still easy to cause export failures and once an error has occurred the product becomes very fragile @John7, as you have discovered. Exactly where the corruption lies after such a failure, I am not sure.
The sleep strategy may help reduce the long term VRAM usage, if executed at the right time (whenever that might be!?) and terminating the Export worker will restore the VRAM it has used and for those really tight on VRAM it might help (a bit) but the failures I have experienced are on the 12GB 3060, not exactly a “tiny” GPU, hence my doubts about any declaration that the latest drivers fix the problem.
The 5060Ti(16GB), on the other hand, seems to be immune!? Why!?
What is more likely is that there is a change in the architecture of the GPU that means that the 5060Ti(16GB) does not suffer from the same problems as the 3000 and 4000 series GPUs in particular.
What GPU and drivers did DxO use in their development and did they encourage Beta Test users of other GPUs to test specific images so they could assess the outcomes?
The new drivers may well help DxO subsequently fix the issues with their software but those issues do not appear to have miraculously disappeared with the installation of the new drivers, I am sorry to say.