WTF?! An electronics store in Japan is advertising an unusual promotion starting at the end of the month. Buy an Asus TUF RTX 4090 and get an Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition for free. Pairing them in the same system won't net you extra frames, but who'd say no to a free graphics card?
Intel stumbled onto a winner in the Arc A750. It's looked pretty good since it was discounted from $290 to $250 back in February, and it's been selling well by all accounts. In fact, it's the best-selling graphics card at NTT-X, which might be why they're bundling it with the RTX 4090 next week.
The store will ship a free Arc A750 with the first five Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24GB GPUs bought after 11 pm on April 30, notes the Japanese news outlet PCWatch. It's a brutally short giveaway more akin to a call-in radio contest.
The TUF RTX 4090 currently sells for $2310 (converted from JPY), including tax at NTT-X. That's a steep premium over the $1,600 MSRP of the GPU, but computer parts tend to be pricier in Japan. They list the Arc A750 for $318, which is about 14% of the cost of the 4090.
There are only a few reasons you'd want a second, much slower graphics card. For example, enthusiasts might enjoy fooling around with hardware from a new contender. Intel's Alchemist architecture does have its intrigue. VideoCardz also points out that Arc graphics cards make decent supplemental video encoders for streamers, but the RTX 4090 doesn't really need the backup. The last reason would be to put the complementary card in a different system, like a family member's PC or a living room console replacement.
A couple of years ago, you could've used a spare graphics card to mine cryptocurrency. Now you'd just be wasting electricity (and thank goodness for that). Besides, having GPUs from multiple vendors in your system just leads to driver headaches. If you're looking for a deal this week, we'd recommend looking at Microcenter's latest promotion instead: get a free $100 Steam gift card with the purchase of any RTX 40-series GPU.