Radeon 9500 np question

okay I have not seen this address...

I want to buy a 9500 np and mod it hopefully to a 9700 np.

I have 2 questions

1) if it fails, the soft mod will not damage the card aka have artifacts after uninstalling the hack to the original drivers.

2) should I buy refurb from newegg or get them new?
the cost is 30 dollars difference. I was thinking if I get refurb I'll buy 2 and double my chances. The one that does work I'll sell on ebay or sell to a friend that will not be softmodding.

I should be getting about $115 soon from selling my albatron soooo......

1) Card will work fine if softmod fails and you have to rollback to the proper drivers. Technically, you're not doing anything to the card that it wasn't meant to do. You're just tricking it into using the four extra pipelines that were disabled in the BIOS.

2) I wouldn't buy refurbished. Very likely, the refurb units NewEgg has are probably returned items from people who tried softmodding and failed (lousy *******s).