Having a "dual core" machine, and having a machine that has two seperate processor sockets isn't all that much different, from a gaming standpoint.
The socket-940 Opteron boards generally have seperate memory slots for each processor. This allows a NUMA-aware operating system to divvy up the memory according to each processor's process. This means that the main bus isn't being used as much. Very, very helpful when you're running virtualized servers. The dual-core socket AM2/939 processors are missing a memory controller. This allows them to use unbuffered memory, as opposed to registered memory. It used to be that the socket 940 boards had the advantage of PCI-X slots. This is completely moot now that PCIe 8/12/16 channel raid cards have appeared on the market.
So, there is a difference between dual-core flip chips, and a pair of single-core flip chips. As a gamer, the dual-core route is better in every possible way. It's cheaper, and for the games that are actually multi-threaded, you will receive the full benefit of having two physical processors. You will even receive a small boost in the games that are serial threaded, because all the system calls can be handled by the second processor.
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