16GB in dual-channel beats 8GB in single-channel — but both beat 8GB in dual-channel.

Start with the right amount of RAM. If you only have 8GB total, dual-channel helps but you’re still going to hit a wall under heavy multitasking. 16GB in single-channel will feel smoother than 8GB in dual-channel for most real-world use.

Dual-channel doubles the memory bandwidth. That helps when you’re swapping between many apps, especially if you’re editing video or running VMs. But bandwidth doesn’t matter if you run out of capacity. Once your RAM is full and the system starts paging to disk, no speed tweak saves you.

For heavy multitasking — think 20+ browser tabs, Slack, Spotify, a code editor, and a couple of Docker containers — the priority is: 1) enough RAM to hold everything, 2) dual-channel to make that RAM fast. If you’re building a new machine, get 16GB in a dual-channel kit. If you’re upgrading an old one, an extra stick for dual-channel is cheap and worth it.

Dual-channel is a nice bonus. 16GB is the baseline.