Branch predictors have gotten really good and it often now makes more sense to rely on it rather than working away the branches.

For example, modern compilers will very rarely introduce conditional moves (cmov) x86 because they are nearly always slower than simply branching. It might be counter intuitive, but a branch prediction breaks the dependencies of the micro-ops between the conditional and the clause. So if your cmov's conditional depends on a load, you need to wait for that load complete before it can execute.

Always benchmark with at-scale data and measure.