1. A method for managing blocks of texture data to be processed in a computer graphics, the graphics system including a host computer and texture mapping hardware, the host computer having a processor and a memory that stores the blocks of texture data to be processed by the texture mapping hardware, the texture mapping hardware including a local memory that locally stores a subset of the blocks of texture data to be processed by the texture mapping hardware, the method comprising the steps of: (a) transferring pixel information from the host computer to the texture mapping hardware; (b) determining, based on the pixel information received from the host computer, which portion of which block of texture data is to be processed; (c) when a portion of one of the blocks of data is to be processed by the texture mapping hardware, determining whether the one of the blocks of texture data is in the local memory; (d) when the one of the blocks of texture data is in the local memory, reading the portion of the one of the blocks of texture data to be processed from the local memory; and (e) when the one of the blocks of texture data is not in the local memory, operating the processor to download the one of the blocks of texture data from the host computer memory to the texture mapping hardware.