Yes, it does. Not all CPU cores are created equal. Performance depends on microarchitecture, cache size, memory bandwidth and latency, clock speed, hardware acceleration of specific features, and hyper-threading capabilities, to name a few.
Take the Xeon E5-2403[1] and the Xeon E5-2637 v4[2]. Both are quad-core Xeons, but they differ by pretty much everything except core count.
Granted, this is an artificial benchmarks, but the results speak for themselves.
In this case, the Xeon E5-2637 v4 is almost three times faster than its little brother, the Xeon E5-2403.
Quantifying CPU performance by number of cores is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst.
Yes! Running applications that can't cope with NUMA means you need to know what model of CPU, and especially know whether your N-cores are on the same socket or not.
Take the Xeon E5-2403[1] and the Xeon E5-2637 v4[2]. Both are quad-core Xeons, but they differ by pretty much everything except core count.
Here's a comparison of their performance: http://cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=1827&cmp%5B%5D....
Granted, this is an artificial benchmarks, but the results speak for themselves. In this case, the Xeon E5-2637 v4 is almost three times faster than its little brother, the Xeon E5-2403.
Quantifying CPU performance by number of cores is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst.
[1]: http://ark.intel.com/products/64615/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...
[2]: http://ark.intel.com/products/92983/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...