You get nearly double the memory bandwidth with dual-channel.

A lot — roughly 80-95% faster in AIDA64 read/write/copy benchmarks. The latency also drops slightly.

The reason is simple: single-channel runs one 64-bit bus, dual-channel runs two at once. In synthetic bandwidth tests like AIDA64, that’s the whole story. You’ll see read speeds jump from ~20GB/s to ~38-40GB/s on typical DDR4-3200.

The 16GB vs 8GB part matters less here. If you were comparing 8GB single vs 16GB dual, you’re also adding more memory capacity, but the benchmark difference is almost entirely about channel count. A 16GB single-channel kit would score about the same as an 8GB single-channel kit.

So if you’re chasing AIDA64 numbers,