Summary of your question is as said by the article.
Quote :
The amount of L2 cache does appear to make a difference - virtually across the board - but the difference isn't as big as some were making it out to be. In the application benchmarks, we found that there was a difference of around 2-3% on average. Both the large and small file compression and encryption tests really benefited from the additional cache, yielding performance improvements of between 6-9%.
Quote :
Overall, the Core 2 Duo with 4MB of L2 cache is quicker than the 2MB Core 2 Duos at the same clock speed, but there are several instances where there is little-to-no difference in performance.
