There's some pretty good points made here, a well built lighter bobweight 440 with custom slugs might be a better bet overall. Pretty easy to run 11's with an old school 500 hp 440, even on pump gas. Plus if you build it with decent compression flat tops you can upgrade the heads to closed chamber E-heads/stealths or SR's later on and probably pick up another 40-50hp and 500-700 more RPM which would morethan close the gap on a stock cast heavy slug 490....

What body is it going in? depending on the weight and gearing sometimes it's a better overall fit (in terms of real world ET) to trade cubes for RPM. A dollar in the heads can be worth 3 in the short block. Most stroker guys do both but I can see certain apps where a freight train torque motor can be cheap and fun. A good example is a 500 caddy in a 78-88 GM A body, it's all done by 5000 rpm but man it's fun getting there.