There were 486 motherboards without L2 cache, either because their L2 chip sockets were left empty, or they had fraudulent empty chip packages devoid of any silicon chips inside them. But I never saw a Pentium compatible motherboard that didn't have at least some L2 cache chips soldered to it, and I believe Windows 95-ME would run only if the computer had some L2 cache (I could never get 95-98 to boot if I turned off the L2 cache in the BIOS). There were however some motherboards based on the Intel 430HX chipset that included a socket just for an L2 cache module, called COAST, for Cache On A STick. They had enough L2 cache soldered to the motherboard for the first 64MB, and adding the COAST would expand that to 512MB.
Those L2 cache chips were static RAM, not the dynamic RAM typically used for video cards. There was also a need for a tag RAM chip to hold the main memory addresses of the L2 cache chips, usually a bigger one if the L2 cache was expanded.
One way to get around the lack of L2 cache or to cache more main memory than allowed by the motharboard is to use an AMD K6 series CPU containing a built-in L2 cache, such as the K6-III, K6-3+ (different chip), or K6-2+ (not K6-2). The only one of these I was able to find was the K6-III, and it's so power hungry it can't safely be used with older socket 7 motherboards equipped with a linear CPU voltage regulator instead of a much more efficient switching mode CPU voltage regulator.
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