An apparatus and method for rasterizing a primitive in a graphics system is disclosed in one example of the invention as including scanning a first row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from a first point and scanning in a first direction. Immediately after scanning the first row of tiles, the method includes moving from the first point to a second point in an orthogonal direction relative to the first row. Immediately after moving from the first point to the second point, the method includes scanning a second row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from the second point and scanning in the first direction. By scanning rows in the same direction immediately prior to and after moving from one row to another, cache utilization is improved.