Way to render a planet

Hi everyone,
I am asking a simple question : is it better to render an icosahedron with the procedural mesh component in one section, or to render it in 20 section (for the 20 faces) and use 20 vertexbuffers, to do culling, BUT it take 60 vertex at start instead of 36 (there always will be 24 vertex of difference between the two ways, even after subdivision into an icosphere).
Thanks for your time, ++