Faster intersection test (AABB-AABB or AABB-triangle)

Question

Which intersection test is generally faster? An axis-aligned bounding box with another? Or an axis-aligned bounding box with a triangle.

I assumed AABB-AABB but I have heard mixed opinions.

Answer 1

An AABB-AABB test can be carried out using (at most) six compares and six conditional jumps on any standard CPU. Can you do that with a triangle and an AABB? See this question to get an idea of the problem's complexity.

Of course, if your hardware is optimized for collision-testing of triangles, this might be different. But in the general case, testing bounding boxes is always faster than about anything else.