Sorting tuples inside signed integers

I'm sorting tuples of 16+16 bits as 32bit integers with SSE2. There are only signed integer instructions for compare and min/max. I don't have a problem with the order for the higher part as its just a hash. But entries with negative hashes will be sorted backwards (right?) Possible but not great solutions could be:

• Zero the higher bit for hashes, losing precision (not great)
• Convert the position to negative if the higher bit of the hash is set, and convert it back after sort开发者_运维百科ing.

Is there a better way?

Just subtract 0x80000000 from your 32 bit values, use signed operations, then add back the 0x80000000 afterwards.