Azvert.com, how's my new layout looking?

[clayg13]

Hey guys, i'm working on a new site for Azvert in order to get away from the template thing. Anyway, here is what i have so far (www.azvert.com/new). The old layout (www.azvert.com) is a template, but i dont think it looks terrible. Which is better? Which one would you go with?

 

[LeetPCUser]

The old one looks way better. The only thing I would recommend is downscaling the size of images. They do take awhile to load.