I can't speak for ACF, but both BoxLang and Lucee use the same codepaths under the hood for executing your query whether you use a tag/component or a BIF.
Here's the relevant files in BoxLang: (both use PendingQuery)
PendingQuery
https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/BoxLang/blob/00a560f70adb92f1b0a6c342c4b506488a70377e/src/main/java/ortus/boxlang/runtime/components/jdbc/Query.java#L155
https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/BoxLang/blob/00a560f70adb92f1b0a6c342c4b506488a70377e/src/main/java/ortus/boxlang/runtime/bifs/global/jdbc/QueryExecute.java#L116