Does upgrading from 8GB to 16GB of RAM help with Chrome's memory usage?

Yes, it helps. Going from 8GB to 16GB means Chrome won’t eat your entire system memory and leave nothing for the OS. With hundreds of tabs, you’re looking at 6–10GB of RAM just for Chrome, and 16GB at least lets you keep browsing while that one tab leaks memory. But Chrome still has garbage memory management, so you’re better off using Tab Groups or suspending unused tabs.