1. An apparatus, comprising: a cache to store a set of triangle vertex indices corresponding to triangle vertices most recently transmitted through a graphics pipeline; and a vertex processing component operative on a graphics processor (GPU) to: receive the set of triangle vertices; compare an index for each vertex of the set of triangle vertices to determine matches to the set of cached triangle vertex indices; and when exactly two matches to the set of cached triangle vertex indices are found, shift a single vertex index into the cache, the single vertex index corresponding to a vertex miss in which a given vertex of the set of triangle vertices does not match any vertex index of the set of cached triangle vertex indices.