Now here is an odd thing. The top of the range, recently produced multi megapixel Panasonic Lumix FX500 vs the camera I have at the moment, the Fuji F30 from a few years ago.
To me the F30 has clearly produced the better shots - take a look at the "outdoor" and "real life noise" comparisons:
http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC_FX500_FX520/outdoor_results.shtml
It's not clear to me because the different number of megapixels on the cameras confuses the issue when comparing 100% crops. A 100% view reveals how much detail can be captured, but for a real-world comparison of sharpness and noise, the images should be cropped differently to equalise the size of the subjects. The way CameraLabs have done it is not "real world", IMO. A reduction in size effectively sharpens an image. You won't generally blow up your pictures larger just because you have a higher-resolution camera. You might do sometimes, but not normally, I suggest.
However, the higher-resolution camera may be worse in terms of noise, after all, because more pixels are being crammed onto the same (or similarly) sized sensor. Technology improves, but not necessarily by enough to make up for the such smaller size of each pixel.
It's mad to have more than about 5 million pixels on such a tiny sensor, but manufacturers have to do it because "megapixels" sell. The result is more noise, or less sharpness or detail if the camera is applying lots of noise reduction to disguise the noise. Having a RAW option helps because you can bypass much of this. Good shake reduction will help as well as it will mean you can use low ISO settings more often.
