Some quick clear-up for Tom Tancredi
Video card makers over request because of all the bad power supplies on the market.
Now a few things to know.
PC power supplies provide more than on voltage. I am just going to cover the main 3 here(while they have standby and some negatives as well)
12 volts. This powers all the heavy stuff(GPU/CPU/Fans/pumps/ect).
5 Volts. This powers USB devices and many controllers. SSD and most 2.5 inch drives as well notebook optical drives are also powered from 5 volts
3.3 volts. I am sure certain devices still need this voltage, but it is not used too much. The SATA spec calls for 3.3 volts, but I have yet to see a drive NEED it.
Now why bring this up?
Well total wattage is the Maximum combined wattage of ALL these rails.
Older power supplies used to load up the 3.3 and 5 volt lines more because at the time more devices used them(cpu/gpu included). At the time they also have multiple power supplies in one so things cost more and had not been as efficient.
Fast forward to modern day.
Power supplies place almost all the power on the 12 volt rail. Another change was using switching DC-DC converters to make the 5 and 3.3 volt rails out of 12 volts made by the main 12 volt rail(so they no longer need 3 power supplies to make these voltages, just the one and 2 dc-dc converters). This allows you to have strange looking stickers that add up to WAY over the rated wattage of a unit. As long as the MAX is not passed you have no issues. This approach allows a newer power supply to provide any combination of high 12 volt current or even 5 and 3.3(while cutting down the amount available on the 12 volt rail.)
This allows a modern power supply to power a system that needs the lower voltages(3.3,5) OR need the higher voltages(12) and anything in between.
Now back to why wattage alone is not enough of an indicator.
Take my shiny old Antec 380 watt power supply. It has 18 amps on its 12 volt rail(that is 216 watts @ 12 volts).
Now take a modern 300 watt power supply that has 22-24(264-288 watts) amps @ 12 volts.
So is the 380 watt power supply better for the modern system? No.
As said above, you need to ALWAYS check 12 volt amp limit(multiply it by 12 to get watts) to ensure it meets your needs. For multi rail power supplies, you need a combined as adding rails does not always work(rarely works to be honest.).
It is also VERY important to know what else is in the system. I light system(lets say a 65 watt cpu and gtx 650ti single drive and 2 sticks of memory) does NOT need a 500(or even Nvidia's 400 watt recommended) watt power supply because the total power of the system will never touch 200 watts.
While a massively overclocked i7(lets say LGA 1366 since they took lots of power when pushed) with a custom water loop and 3 x 360 mm rads and delta fans all around with 10 hard drives may need even MORE than the 400 watt recommendation.