I never said it was crufty, just that it wasn't successful for me in improving my use-case despite requiring noticeably fewer instructions (not cycles). I am,

I never said it was crufty, just that it wasn't successful for me in improving my use-case despite requiring noticeably fewer instructions (not cycles). I am, however, on Athlon 64. That may explain why I found it to be indistinguishable to the short loop in profiling. I didn't guess anything, I even explicitly explained my profiling methodology.