What manufacturer is best for the GTX460 1gb?

Well. firstly there is no best in manufacturers,
Evga is good for warranty, MSI good for the cooler, asus for the voltage option..
So maybe all specialize into something, but all good, I got the zotac version which i like, i believe the MSI version may be better at this time-
Btw, a gtx 460 is faster than a 5830

Forget the 5830, it's about 6850 vs gtx460.

They're priced the same, perform pretty much the same, power consumption is a tiny bit lower on the 6850 but nothing worth of mention, tesselation performance pretty close too. It's up to personal preference.

All those are pretty good brands and won't let you down, just buy the one that's cheapest

To put this into perspective:

MSI: £161
Asus: £158
Zotac: £149
EVGA: £159

Next to no difference in price which makes me want to go for the zotac version just to save the money really. However the MSI one is tempting..

Is the zotac card the one with the blower type cooler or the center fan one?

The blower type one won't be as quiet though it has the advantage of pushing all the heat straight outta the system without heating up everything else inside. But shouldnt be a problem as long as you have good ventilation.

I'd go for the asus myself because of the voltage control and little price difference.

Keep in mind that there is always a reason that something is cheaper. If all three cards are ~$160 and one is ten dollars less, than that tells you something. Maybe the Zotac ones are selling as well, so they lowered to price, whatever. I personally have had great experiences with MSI, Asus, and EVGA, so you can't go wrong with any of those.

I wanted an evga one, but at that time the card just came in, there was only zotac version available, i needed a gtx 460 so i had to take the zotac version, and the zotac is nice- !

Well it seems some of them have 192bit interfaces whilst others have 256bit which is confusing me. Considering I thought it was just the 768mb version with the 192bit.

Yes, 192 bit for 768 mb and 256 bits for 1 gb version-
Choosing will depend upon the resolution you playing at, for 1080 p the 1 gb will perform bit better-
Under that res you are fine with 768 mb

I'm going for 1080p well.. HDMI/DVI output. However I'm confused there's the 1024mb MSI Cyclone which should be 256bit however it's listed as 192bit. However this could be a mistake.

Nice- At that res 1 gb will be nice-
Yes its a mistake- 1 gb = 256 b

The MSI Hawk is the best GTX 460 around, especially if you are going to overclock. It's also more expensive usually.
Looking at prices over there I would probably get this myself;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...
If you want to stick with the GTX 460 I would get this;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...
If you are willing to overclock the card yourself(it is easy to do.) If not then this has a nice high factory OC and great cooling at a good price;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...
This Cyclone would also be a good option;
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/230557

I'm tempted with the new ATi 6xxx series cards but I don't know, I'm stuck in my ways with the old NVidia cards. Very tempted with the Asus and MSI Cyclone.

Might have to go with the Asus, seems to be better or do I save £10 and get the MSI. I'll be looking to upgrade this time next year s this is more of a holding myself over til next year option. At this moment the cost is probably the beneficial factor.

Wasn't planning to go ATI, when I used to have a couple of their cards (last time I owned one must have been about 2007) the drivers constantly gave me headaches, how is it possible for a massive manufacturer to have such awful software?!

Nvidia drivers on the other hand I found them wonderful, so I'm looking to stick with them. So MSI Cyclone might be my choice, at least it's got a slightly faster clock speed and seems to be perfect for what I need. After being stuck with a 9500GT for the last 6 months!

I'm tempted to go with the GTX460 cyclone just for that damn HS and fan! From the benchmarks I've seen it does perform a bit better in aspects to the cooling than some of the shielded versions.

I just realised the HD6850 is actually quite reasonably priced and beats stock 460's it's just the factory OC'd models that beat the 6850s. So:

6850 or the MSI GTX460 cyclone? Bare in mind the cyclone is slightly OC'd @ 725mhz opposed to 675mhz. Just too much choice for within my budget!!

ATI/AMD doesn't even make chipsets for Intel processors. I would pretty much ignore all of that stuff. Video cards don't favor certain processors. The only issue is whether or not your motherboard supports crossfire and/or SLI then you may want to choose accordingly.
The Cyclone is a good card with good cooling but I would put the cooling on the DirectCU cards a notch higher and the Hawk is the best.
As for the HD6850 vs GTX 460 at reference speeds the HD6850 is very slightly faster. The factory OCed GTX 460s are going to be faster than either but a factory OC is kind of meaningless if you are going to overclock on your own. Overclocking a video card is quite easy and you'll get better speeds than any factory OC so I would pretty much just worry about the best cooling rather than what speeds they sell the cards at.

I got the Gigabyte GTX 460 and it isn't to bad but the value isn't in the cooler but the pcb. The cooler is junk as it doesn't cool the rest of the card very well and have to run the fans max or lte it die like most newts out there killing their cards. The core tops out in the 60s with out the air on but the power VRM gets rather toasty so I modded it. The others are going to be the same way so the only other gts460s that I would look at with the intention of modding them is the MSI cards but don't get your hopes up. The 6850 and 6870 both have the same issues but not as bad but the fan on the 6850 is noisy like one would expect on a reference cooler. Performance is good no matter which that you pick but don't bother with the 768mb version of the GTX460. The GTS450 is on the weak side and a GTS250 trades places with it in benchmarks and at best it is head to head with a GTX260 yea that is right a gtx260 and isn't any better than the old 192 shader 65nm version that came out nearly two years ago. So don't bother with it. The 5770 isn't a speed demon wet hot nipple dream but some ware in the middle if driver bugs aren't a problem with you.

From what I've seen the matter of the 6850 vs 460 alot of the time is down to the game in question and even then it can be something as little as a ~5 fps difference.

I 'think' I might go for either the Asus or the MSI cyclone. If it's of any relevance I'm using an AMD proc with an ATI chipset.

I don't see any thing wrong with your post and ATI chipset with Nvidia doesn't give any issues either. The SLI hack works well even on ATI chipsets  

I will definitely! But I don't want to have that lingering feeling that I bought the wrong one when I've got it all up and running!

However seeing as I'm still suprised and pleased with how my 9500gt treats me (it was a really cheap 512mb one too) even on high end games. This will completely wipe the floor with it and make me sit there like   all the time. Now I just need to work out what monitor/tv to get for this 22/24 inch is my main focus and my plan is to hook the xbox up to the HDMI and then the pc up to the DVI.