A method comprises obtaining a first plurality of render commands comprising at least a geometry stage and a fragment stage. An identification may be made as to which of the geometry stages of the first plurality of render commands are idempotent. Dependency information is determined for the first plurality of render commands, e.g., identifying and labeling both “true” and “artificial” dependencies between the stages of the commands. The first plurality of render commands may be encoded and executed by a graphics processing unit (GPU) according to a labeled execution graph generated based on the dependency information. During execution, the GPU may attempt to “opportunistically” launch at least one identified idempotent geometry stage command for which at least one artificial barrier still remains. If the opportunistically-launched geometry stage work fails, the work may be discarded, and the method may wait until all barriers have been met before attempting to relaunch it.