Comment by adrian_b

I do not agree to call "exceptions" the cases where branchless code is preferable, because they can be quite frequent in certain application domains, like sorting and searching.

The difference between the cases when branches are worse and the cases when they are better, is whether the tested condition is random (i.e. unpredictable) or not.

Whenever you compare a random number with a threshold (or two random numbers between themselves) and use the result for conditional execution, that is an example where using branches is worse.

In most cases, when writing a program it is easy to estimate whether branches will be predictable or not, and in the latter case branchless methods should be used.