In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition are massively better than the AMD Radeon R7 7650K.

The HD 7850 has a 255 MHz higher core clock speed and 40 more Texture Mapping Units than the Radeon R7 7650K. This results in the HD 7850 providing 45.1 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 7850 has a 255 MHz higher core clock speed and 24 more Render Output Units than the Radeon R7 7650K. This results in the HD 7850 providing 25.4 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Radeon R7 7650K was released over a year more recently than the HD 7850, and so the Radeon R7 7650K is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 7850.

The HD 7850 has 1024 MB video memory, but the Radeon R7 7650K does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The Radeon R7 7650K has 384 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition has 1024. However, the actual shader performance of the Radeon R7 7650K is 235 and the actual shader performance of the HD 7850 is 849. The HD 7850 having 614 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 7850 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Radeon R7 7650K.

The Radeon R7 7650K requires 95 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Radeon R7 7650K and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 7850. The HD 7850 has been recommended a PSU with 200 Watts more than the Radeon R7 7650K. The difference is significant enough that the HD 7850 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the Radeon R7 7650K.