It's very hard for an overflow check to be mis-predicted. On x86, for static branch prediction, it's sufficient to generate code with a forward branch to be pre

It's very hard for an overflow check to be mis-predicted. On x86, for static branch prediction, it's sufficient to generate code with a forward branch to be predicted as unlikely the first time. From that point, as the branch will never be taken (unless it actually triggers a panic but then who cares), it will keep being predicted as not taken. A correctly-predicted non taken conditional jump on x86 has 0 latency. In the specific case of overflow, you don't even need to generate a cmp instruction. It basically means that's close to a wash, in performance. The actual negative effect that could be measurable is disabling optimizations (like composition of multiple operations, as you need to check each one for overflow).