Systems, apparatuses, and methods for determining preferred memory page management policies by software are disclosed. Software executing on one or more processing units generates a memory request. Software determines the preferred page management policy for the memory request based at least in part on the data access size and data access pattern of the memory request. Software conveys an indication of a preferred page management policy to a memory controller. Then, the memory controller accesses memory for the memory request using the preferred page management policy specified by software.