This disclosure presents techniques and structures for determining a rendering mode (e.g., a binning rendering mode and a direct rendering mode) as well as techniques and structures for switching between such rendering modes. Rendering mode may be determined by analyzing rendering characteristics. Rendering mode may also be determined by tracking overdraw in a bin. The rendering mode may be switched from a binning rendering mode to a direct rendering mode by patching commands that use graphics memory addresses to use system memory addresses. Patching may be handled by a CPU or by a second write command buffer executable by a GPU.