From a virtual machine's perspective, there is no difference between sockets or cores. They each represent one vCPU at the end of the day. So 1 x 4 is the same number of vCPUs as a 4 x 1. It's how ESXi treats this topology when it comes to NUMA that matters, and for that reason the preference is for sockets over cores as this allows ESXi to make the best decision on how to lay out the VM's memory.