What do you mean by "better"? Better sounding, better performing, better looking?!?!? Hollowed out converters sound like ass!!!! I like the sound of an X-pipe in front of certain types of mufflers and the sound of H-Pipes in front of others. It all depends on your personal taste.
...whatever you do, don't gut your stock converters, or we'll hunt you down!!!
You could get yourself an off road H-pipe for that kind of scratch. Check into Mac or BBK for the least expensive models. And stick with something in the 2 1/2" variety. Any larger is counterproductive for most cars.
I was totally against x pipes on 5.0's until I put mine one.. I installed it when I put on my longtubes and still had my flowmaster catback and it sounded great.. Just made it slightly raspier than the H and IMO sounded much better... Now that I have the borla's, I could never go back
so i recently bought my 94 5.0 stang it had flowmaster 40s with the stock h-pipe. It sounded ok but i wanted somthing that sounded mean so i bought bbk equal length headers and a pypes o/r x pipe. I also installed a fenderwel bbk cold air intake i ran a set of flowmaster 50s 3 chamber and omg i love the sound of my car people almost break their neck to see whats coming down the road x-pipe is the best in my opinion but it also depends on ur sound taste