Systems, apparatuses, and methods for performing dead surface invalidation are disclosed. An application sends draw call commands to a graphics processing unit (GPU) via a driver, with the draw call commands rendering to surfaces. After it is determined that a given surface will no longer be accessed by subsequent draw calls, the application sends a surface invalidation command for the given surface to a command processor of the GPU. After the command processor receives the surface invalidation command, the command processor waits for a shader engine to send a draw call completion message for a last draw call to access the given surface. Once the command processor receives the draw call completion message, the command processor sends a surface invalidation command to a cache to invalidate cache lines for the given surface to free up space in the cache for other data.