The way the hard drive cache works is the hard drive has a caching algorithm... it's a program that predicts what data will be needed next and loads it from the physical disk into the hard drive's cache so it can be read much quicker. However, the caching algorithm isn't always correct, some data gets put in cache that isn't needed, so it has to physically read the data you need from the disk anyway. However, with more cache, there's more room for the caching algorithm to store data that you may need, which increases the chances of something you need being in the cache. An 8 MB cache is no good if the caching algorithm sucks.
Then there's the fuction referred to as write caching, where files that need to be written to disk are sent and stored in the cache until the drive can physically write them to the disk... this isn't like RAM or virtual memory, cached writes only stay in the cache for milliseconds until the drive has finished it's previous read or write cycle.
What types of things benefit from an 8 MB cache? I/O intensive applications, games, pretty much anything that randomly and periodically needs info from the hard drive. You won't see much benefit, if any at all in benchmarks like Hard Drive Tach, because that measures the drive's ability to physically read from the disk. You may see a little benefit in transferring large files... but not much.
Effects of an 8 MB cache drive... Windows boots faster, programs and games load faster, if you don't have much RAM and Windows is forced to use virtual memory for a lot of programs they will feel faster.
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