Nvidia is planning to launch a new GeForce 500 series desktop graphics card to help strengthen the company's competitiveness against AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6790. That at least according German site Heise Online, which claims a non-'Ti' GeForce GTX 560 is in the works to fill the gap between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 560 Ti. Basically, it sounds like it could be a direct replacement for the popular GeForce GTX 460 card.

The card is said to have a similar configuration to the GF104-based GTX 460, with one SM disabled for a total of 336 CUDA cores, 56 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface and 1GB of GDDR5. Clock speed and overclocking potential should be higher than the GTX 460, though, supposedly in the range of 800MHz.

With the GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560 Ti currently selling for around $149 and $249, respectively, the non-'Ti' GeForce GTX 560 will probably land at the popular $199 price point. Of course this is all far from being confirmed at the moment, but we expect to hear more as the mid-April to early May rumored launch window approaches.