The design is a major improvement, although to be frank, the previous design was so exceedingly busy that almost any layout that reduced clutter would have been a major step in the right direction
Some problems with the page width: On widescreen monitors, the background image doesn't fill the whole page. Setting the background div's width to 100% and allowing the background image to tile would resolve this issue. Meanwhile, on small monitors, the page is just a bit too wide. I'm not sure what web developers shoot for these days, but it seems like most sites still work on 1280x1024 screens; the new layout here is about 50 pixels too wide for such a resolution.
And as Malorn mentioned, the layout uses a lot of vertical real estate which pushes the content much further down the screen that it ought to. Aside from reducing the size of the large image, reducing the top and bottom padding on the buttons and headers would help without compromising the aesthetics (the text itself is large enough that it should remain tablet friendly). Moving the Forums, IRC Chat, News, and Contact Us links at the very top of the page to the right-hand side above the search box, so that you could move the PSU banner up, could save some additional vertical space.
Again, these nitpicks aside, the new layout is much better than the old one. Great work!