On modern day Intel cpus (no idea on AMD's side) math using longs is faster than math using floats. ymmv depending on architecture.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2550281/floating-point-v...

Floats were not historically adopted for speed, but because you can get more decimal places with small numbers like 8 bit numbers.

Today with 64 and 128 bit numbers, floating point loses most of its historical benefit, but of course it still has its benefits.