a lot of albums that i download come as a single mp3 along with a cue file. i always split it with cue splitter, delete the 2 original files, then burn all the single tracks together. the cds seem to play smoothly with no real gap in between tracks but is it any different when burnt using the cue file (more smoother between tracks)?

No difference in terms of playback.

The "gaps" that are introduced by encoder padding (of lossy codecs) are usually very very small. It might not be a noticeable annoyance to you. You'll only really notice whether track transitions are truly gapless or not when two tracks are supposed to blend together seamlessly with zero silence in between.

You're only getting true gapless like the original album if -

1.) the files on the discs you burn are still mp3s; the mp3s are encoded by LAME; and your playback software is aware of the LAME tag which it uses to ignore the encoder padding

or

2.) you're burning true audio CDs, from LAME encoded mp3s, and you're using one of the few apps that actually remove the encoder padding when decoding mp3 to WAV / CD redbook audio