Reach with a limited budget

I've been wondering about something and would appreciate your input.

Most of us deal with a limited budget when it comes to photography (and most like everything else), as such we want to get the best performance we can for our money, but when it comes to long reach I'm a bit stumped.

What would give the best performance of these scenarios?

A megazoom bridge camera (Canon SX30, Nikon P100, Fuji HS10 ect), or an entry level DSLR with a "cheap" tele lens like a Sigma 70-300.

The DSLR will end up being a bit more expensive, but it will also have a lot more options and be a more complex design which would increase the production cost.

Obviously the bridge camera will have comparable sensor resolution and much longer reach. But viewing images from them at a pixel level is pretty painful.

The DSLR won't have anywhere near the same reach, but much better quality at the pixel level.

Bringing them to the same effective focal length by cropping the DSLR image and resizing the bridge camera image to the same size, which image would end up being better?

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D40, Nikkor 18-200VR, 18-55, 55-200VR, 35 f/1.8, Sigma 10-20, SB400
Canon S95