Yes, it certainly does. As far as I can tell it takes more engineer hours to make an efficient x86 front end than it does a RISC front end and the RISC designs

Yes, it certainly does. As far as I can tell it takes more engineer hours to make an efficient x86 front end than it does a RISC front end and the RISC designs I see tend to balance their pipelines so that they're wider in front than x86 designs typically are. Everything here is a matter of "all else being equal" and the talent and hard work of the design team are more important than any of the ISA differences we're talking about here.