The 6502 definitely reads or writes every cycle! - consult the data sheet (or VICE's 64doc) for more info. This is also not hard to verify on common 6502-based

The 6502 definitely reads or writes every cycle! - consult the data sheet (or VICE's 64doc) for more info. This is also not hard to verify on common 6502-based hardware. Suppose it executes a zero page read instruction. It reads the instruction on the first cycle, the operand address on the second cycle, and the operand itself on the third. 1 byte per cycle. (For a NOP, it reads the instruction the first cycle, fetches the next byte on the second cycle, then ignores the byte it just fetched. I think this is because the logic is always 1 cycle behind the next memory access, so by the time it realises the instruction is 1 byte it's already committed to reading the next byte anyway and the best it can do is just not increment the program counter.)