Do I really save much?

Depends how much you want to spend, I did a 360 with a good set of pistons, shot peened the rods, and a worked over set of J heads, balanced the whole assembly, it ran about 9.5 to 1 compression. The 360 is a great motor from the factory, only problem was the low compression ratio. I ran mid to high 12's with 391 gears, high 11's on the bottle, my heads were worked over pretty good though, but I was probably half the price of the stroker.