A most recently used bit (25) is used to determine if a data transfer should occur from a fill buffer (20) into a data memory (32) in a cache (15) If the data to be displaced in the data memory (32) has been referenced more recently than the data present in the fill buffer (20), then the transfer should not occur. When a cache miss does occur, a control register (50) is used to determine the conditions for loading the fill buffer (20).