A method and apparatus for handling low power and high performance loads is herein described. Software, such as a compiler, is utilized to identify producer loads, consumer reuse loads, and consumer forwarded loads. Based on the identification by software, hardware is able to direct performance of the load directly to a load value buffer, a store buffer, or a data cache. As a result, accesses to cache are reduced, through direct loading from load and store buffers, without sacrificing load performance.