I’m not on the devteam. I do know how Multisite works.
Separate sites use more diskspace, though not very much more DB space at the end of the day (one user table is shared by all). But you didn’t ask about SPACE. You said CPU/Memory issues.
If you have 10 separate sites on your server, with 10 separate dbs, you’re still going to have about the same about of CPU cranking going on. But the killer is generally NOT Multisite, unless your server has some shoddy PHP installs (not uncomon). Traffic will kill you first, and that’s not a factor of Multisite or not.
Would I do this on shared hosting? Maybe for one or two sites. Most of the time, I suggest a VPS, since you’ll want to tweak memory and php and httpd settings to optimize them for WordPress in general.
And if you STILL don’t want Multisite (though I don’t know why you’re in this forum section then), read https://digwp.com/2009/06/wordpress-configuration-tricks/
You CAN define multiple table prefixes. I don’t know of anyone who’s done and up and up comparison of that to Multisite, mind you, and I don’t know if you’d have other permissions issues, but just incase you think WP Multisite isn’t stable, well, wordpress.com has been using it.