Restart vs. Reload

This may sound like an idiotic question, but I have not seen any clarification anywhere. I am looking for the difference between “amportal restart” and “core restart now”.

To take it one step further, when it is stated that “settings cannot be changed on reload”, does that apply to “amportal restart”, “core restart now”, “module relaod somemodule”, or does that imply that the whole box needs to be rebooted for the settings to take effect?

I don’t like to make assumptions but, based off of this wording, I would expect that if I were to use either of the restart options all new settings would take effect.

Am I correct?

Thanks.