well the best performance is getting the FlipTop, you have to a little careful when opening the lid but its all good. The swap card is a little bad, you have to practically break a peice of to make it work.
Swap Magic will work. It is the cheap way of modding and has it faults for sure. But it will work
Your best option if you have the money is to get a REPUTABLE site to install a GOOD modchip like
DMS4 Pro SE, Matrix Infinity, Crystal Chip V1.1
they will have many advantages over using Swap Magic
But i was a Swap Magic user at one time when i first started out and it will work if that is the way you choose to go. You will just have to watch out for games that need rebuilding, patching, dummy files removed, or that are DVD9 and will need special proceedures to shrink down. I would say that only about 10% of the games i did when using Swap Magic needed anything special. But do a bit of research before you make up your mind so you can make a well educated choice.
once you get going with Swap Magic it works perfect ... i made 3 coasters before getting it down on how to burn and use it. Here is a tutorial on how to burn with Nero once you get it ... Nero Burning Rom is what you need and it works perfect everytime and if your just getting started make sure you read before burning or doing anything ... trust me i spent about a month on here reading before i did anything and still didn't do it right so read, read, and read ... here is the tutorial