That Dodgy Intel Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo' at CES 2012 (UPDATED)

Word has been flying round the internet about Intel's dodgy Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo'. Intel's Mooly Eden, VP, PC Client Group was attempting to demonstrate a racing game on a prototype laptop - 'ultrabook' - fitted with an upcoming 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor with a racing wheel attached and allegedly rendering DX11 graphics. However, as is very apparent at the start, it's actually a video, because the control panel for the free VLC video player pops up for a few seconds. Eden then 'drives' a car and after a few seconds puts up one hand and then the other, because as he says "they are driving it from backstage". However, there was no one driving the game "backstage", as it was just a video and Eden doesn't say anything about this at any point in the presentation.

This gives conspiracy theorists lots of ammunition, as perhaps the game was actually played on a high powered desktop PC with NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics cards? What game was it? Eden doesn't say. "IB can't really do these graphics!" they cry and so on. Sure, man 'didn't' go to the moon, either... However, we believe that while yes, there was a bit of deception going on, it was nothing more than a white(ish) lie. Why? Because Ivy Bridge comes out in April and people aren't going to forget this demo. They will immediately put IBs DX11 graphics to the test with similar games and if it doesn't deliver, Intel will have a lot of egg on its face. Here's what Intel had to say about this demo in an official statement:

We used a video in the DX11 Ivy Bridge-based Ultrabook demo simply for expediency at today's Intel press event at CES. We were extremely limited for time and didn't want to lose any time by getting in and out of the game. And Mooly told the audience this at the end of the demo… a couple of people have posted video of the demo on YouTube and you can hear Mooly say that the demo was driven by the folks behind the stage because he was limited for time and then went on to explain the DX11 support in Ivy Bridge.

We first demonstrated the DX11 feature of Ivy Bridge at IDF last September. It runs extremely well. The demo can easily be reproduced live for anyone who wants to see it. We'd be happy to show it to you and let you play DX11 games the next time you are in Santa Clara.

Well, whether one takes this statement at face value or not, the internet arena is a very unforgiving place and people don't like to be lied to, so the criticisms and conspiracy theories have been coming thick and fast, hence the best policy is total honesty in any presentation. Eden should have simply explained at the start that he was going to play a video demo for time/practicality purposes and no one would have batted an eyelid - this is Intel after all, not some unheard of company with no reputation and people would trust what was being explained to them. Probably the best thing that Intel could do right now to fix the fallout, is to give a real DX11 demo with that racing game, like they should have in the first place.

Note that this demo was actually preceded by a real time Havok render of a troll, as reported by AnandTech, which looked rather impressive.

Below, we have two high quality (720p/1080p) YouTube videos of the racing demo event, from different perspectives, to allow the reader to judge for themselves. The first one is courtesy of our source, IGN and the second posted by Bright Side of News.



UPDATE

Intel later did show AnandTech Formula 1 2011 running on a different laptop:

Yesterday we reported Intel ran a video of a DX11 title instead of running the actual game itself on a live Ivy Bridge notebook during Mooly Eden's press conference. After the press conference Intel let me know that the demo was a late addition to the presentation and they didn't have time to set it up live but insisted that it worked. I believed Intel (I spent a lot of time with Ivy Bridge at the end of last year and saw no reason to believe that DX11 functionality was broken) but I needed definitive proof that there wasn't some issue that Intel was trying to deliberately hide. Intel promptly invited me to check out the demo live on an Ivy Bridge notebook which I just finished doing.

The notebook isn't the exact same one as used by Mooly Eden, but this alternative one certainly did show the game running on Intel HD Graphics 4000, which is what the embedded IGP in Ivy Bridge is called:

Ivy Bridge engineering sample:

And finally, a video of the demo itself:


And as you can see, it's playing it just fine. There will no doubt be some great laptops based on Ivy Bridge and is certainly something to look forward to.