circuits , methods , and apparatus that provide for partial texture load instructions . instead of one instruction that may take several shader passes to complete , several instructions are issued , where each instruction is an instruction to retrieve a part or portion of a texture . while each instruction is performed , the other shader circuits can perform other instructions , thus increasing the utilization of the shader circuits when large textures are read from memory . since several shader passes may be required to read a texture , if a particular instruction needs the texture , one exemplary embodiment reorders instructions such that other instructions are performed before the particular instruction that needs the texture .