It's true whenever the function call overhead for the comparison operation dominates. Inlining a trivial operation (often just one instruction) is one extreme.

At the other extreme L1C cache (typically just 32 kB) gets constantly trashed by numerous type specialized functions. Individually fast when microbenchmarked, but collectively slow.

That's why profiling is a must when high performance is required. Microbenchmarks can be very misleading.