In this paper, we consider alternate ways of storing a sparse matrix and their effect on computational speed. They involve keeping both the indices and the non-zero elements in the sparse matrix in a single data structure. These schemes thus help reduce memory system misses that occur when the usual indexing based storage schemes are used to store sparse matrices and give promising performance improvements. Categories and Subject Descriptors G.4 [Mathematics of Computing]: Mathematical Software General Terms Algorithms, Performance, Design Keywords sparse matrix computations, sparse matrix storage, memory wall, caches, spatial and temporal locality