more real phases good. more fake phases not awful but not good. claiming you have 8 phases when you have 4 doubled is lame. 8+3 is 8 cpu phases and 3 soc/igpu phases. you can do more phases but depending on the rest of the system it may not make any difference.

its basically the same sort of thing as a v8 car engine vs a v4 car engine, the v4 will vibrate more and be less pleasant to operate but its cheaper to make. a fake 8phase is like having two v4's where two pistons fire at the same time, all the power of a v8 but all the vibration(ish) of a v4. less than ideal. there are ways to mitigate these voltage variations though so just saying its a 4 phase doesnt mean its definitely worse than a 8phase. a fake 8 phase is cheaper than a real 8 phase and in a lot of situations the voltage variation doesnt matter if each twinned vrm is beefy enough.