In geekbench --which is not a great benchmark. According to GB my i5 is as fast as a 5950x (it's not).
The increase in cache is going to make a difference in the real world and especially in games.
I'm not so sure. It all depends if the cache is going to slow down the overall performance of the CPU. The current example we have is the 5800X3D, which was good in video gaming performance but sucked on the overall performance of the CPU. The price for the gimmick is just not worth it.
Also Intel has spent billions of dollars of advertisement in over 20 years to ingrained their customers on the Increase speed (mhz) = better performance.
What I think is going to happen is back to the Tic' Tok' small increases of performance every year/generation like before. So the Cache might be a little larger every generation in order to not to cannibalize previous generations sales of components that is still in stock.
Just enough to be better than before. But that's all I think it will be. However if it is easier to just increase the mhz to achieve similar results than adding additional cache, they will do so in order to save money
Or do a combination of the two concepts.