I remember Linus making much the same point: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yarchive.net&#x2F;comp&#x2F;linux&#x2F;cmov.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yarchive.net&#x2F;comp&#x2F;linux&#x2F;cmov.html</a><p>It generally lines up with what I&#x27;ve observed.  Surprisingly, I&#x27;ve found that even arithmetic comparisons like you mentioned ran a bit faster with branches instead of conditional moves.  The one case where I have seen comparisons benefit is with SSE code where the comparison results go straight to a register instead of a flag.