CES 2012: Intel fakes ‘live’ Ultrabook demo, mulls massive advertising campaign to push MacBook Air-killers [UPDATE 2x]

UPDATE 1: As several commenters pointed out, it’s probably meant as a gag as Intel executive at one point joked about driving one handed and then without hands at all. The distinction remains unclear though due to audio not being clear enough. Nevertheless, the question remains: Why run the thing through backstage and not give a real-life demo?

UPDATE 2: Acknowledging “the confusion”, the publication followed-up with hands-on video showing F1 2011 running in real-time on the exact same system that Mooley Eden had been using to run the pre-recorded VLC video demo. Find it included at the article bottom, below the fold.

It looks like chip giant Intel has gone too far by attempting to have prospective buyers sold on Ultrabooks. Bright Side of News* editor Anshel Sag caught Intel’s Mooley Eden cheating during yesterday’s press conference at the CES show in Las Vegas. Mooley can be seen in the below video fake-driving a commonplace racing game by Codemasters called F1 2011.

In reality —and you can see it briefly at the beginning of the clip— he simply played back a video file using VLC media player and proceeded to fool the audience into believing they were witnessing a live demonstration of the graphical capabilities of the Ivy Bridge platform that powers forthcoming Ultrabook notebooks.

This prompted the author to dub the unbelievable move a display as “a gross distrust of their own demo.”  Intel promised a massive advertising campaign to help push MacBook Air-like notebooks that have been struggling to steal the limelight of Apple’s machine.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGrPyMKA_k]

Acer yesterday announced Ultrabooks with Thunderbolt interconnect and other major PC vendors are working on Ultrabooks of their own. However, the advent of Ultrabooks is beset with various engineering problems. Vendors lacking Apple’s economies of scale initially experienced difficulties price-matching the company’s MacBook Air as Intel refused to lower chip prices. Additionally, Apple has a lock on the unibody manufacturing process so many announced Ultrabooks remain a combination of plastic and metal rather than being machined from a single block of aluminum, like the Air. In the meantime, the MacBook Air is putting up impressive sales numbers. According to DigiTimes Research, Apple shipped 1.2 million MacBook Airs during the December quarter, recording a sequential increase at a time when every other PC vendor failed to keep their fourth-quarter notebook shipments at the third quarter levels.

Intel’s Ivy Bridge mobile CPU roadmap reveals a lineup of Ultra Low Voltage processors rated at 17W, known as “Ultra” or “U-series.” The new standard voltage processors, known as the “M-series,” will be introduced and rated at 35, 45, and 55W variants in April or May. On the desktop front, Intel told partners that its Ivy Bridge architecture would be delayed until the second quarter of 2012. Apple will likely refresh its desktop Mac lineup with 2012 Ivy Bridge chipset. The Mac maker does not currently use these, but they work great in Hackintoshes.

According to Intel’s internal slides leaked by ComputerBase.de, desktop Ivy Bridge platform shows modest CPU improvements, but performance improvements of the integrated Intel 4000 GPU are huge over the current-generation Sandy Bridge. These chips should allow for native 4K resolution displays while consuming less power than the current generation chips. Beyond Ivy Bridge, Intel outlined plans to release an Ivy Bridge successor in 2013 nicknamed Haswell. The 22-nanometer Haswell chip will be fabbed on Intel’s 3D-transistor architecture and will be faster and use 20 percent less power compared to the current Sandy Bridge chips. The Haswell platform, Intel said, should be able to power an x86 computer for 24 hours with 10 days of standby time, just by single charge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agR-5DF9HZg]