MSI GTX 460 Cyclone or Hawk?

If you are going to OC, then get a normal GTX460 and overclock it as much as you want. These cards are special cards which are factory overclocked, its not that you cant overclock these cards. Why pay extra for something which you can do on your own! :)

With RivaTuner its easy.
 

AresReborn

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Aug 30, 2010
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I agree completely but I should probably reiterate. =) I'm going to hold off on the OC a few months until I have my desktop air flow nice and ice cold.

Also I love the cyclone, hawk, and direct cu because they have amazing cooling.

Decisions decisions. =/
 
None of the above.

I like the direct exhaust cooler models better. The ones listed previously have good coolers that do a great job of getting heat off of the gpu die, but they then dump that heat back into the case where case cooling has to deal with it. The result is that the air that both the gpu AND the cpu get for cooling is hotter than it needs to be, resulting in higher temperatures for both.

There are other good units with direct exhaust cooling such as this EVGA superclocked:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130568
 

Tamz_msc

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I would go for the Asus but the card is quite big compard to the Cyclone.The cyclone will save you a lot of space, which is important for good airflow if you have a case that is not roomy enough.But the Cyclone is the quietest GTX 460, and also one of the coolest.It is also a few $$ cheaper than the ASUS Direct CU or the Hawk.So, I think that you should go for the Cyclone.
 

Anik8

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Sep 17, 2010
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Hey I don't know about the asus here so I'm only suggesting you amongst cyclone and hawk and its like I've learnt the cyclone has one single large cooler while the hawk has two fans and although it may seem like they are of same size but actually there is a difference in their diameter.
which begs the question if you can manually tune the fan speed and run your card smoothly?
As you are trying to alter the fan speeds, unequal ratio and balance of the cooling system may affect your card's performance
So I'd suggest the cyclone if u want to do OC .Its very quiet and many people say it runs cooler than the hawk at idle time
thx :)
 
To reach those speeds with either card, you are going to have to use voltage tweaking, which MSI supports using their Afterburner software. The Hawk is a much more specialized version designed for overclocking, with higher quality parts and a redesigned PCB. It also has a better cooler. I assume it's also more expensive.

Full load:

Hawk 57c/43dB/max OC 952mhz
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-460-hawk-review/1

Cyclone 64c/43dB/max OC 885mhz
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-460-cyclone-oc-1024-review/1