I never read beyond top 200 from front page. However, 5-20x/week I click on "new" and skim headlines from the top 10 or so (or anything on the page with at least 2 votes). Most of these never make it to the top 200, yet I typically find about as many posts whose content is of interest to me on this page as there are on the front page.

Of course, the nice thing about the front page is that the discussion can often be more interesting than the content. Won't get that on new posts.