A method of improved texture-partition-dependent depth partition is disclosed. First, the available texture partitions for a collocated texture block are classified into two or more groups, and a set of candidate depth partitions is determined for each group. In one embodiment, at least one set of the candidate depth partitions contain more than one candidate depth partition and less than all candidate depth partitions. In another embodiment, the collocated texture blocks are classified into two groups, and one of the two groups includes the N×N texture partition and at least another texture partition. In yet another embodiment, the collocated texture blocks are classified into three groups or more. A current depth partition for the current depth block is then selected from a corresponding set of candidate depth partitions according to a corresponding group that a current texture partition associated with the collocated texture block belongs.