So while doing the benchmarking of the various parameters, Stefan pointed out the my numbers were ridiculously low. I wasn't really paying attention because I was looking at differences between parameters but then he posted me an example of a single thread pgbench using my same parameters. His machine is a dual core connected to 10 spindles on a NetAPP. In theory my machine should be faster. It is not. His configuration, like mine was all defaults. Stefan's numbers.

scaling factor: 100
number of clients: 4
number of transactions per client: 1000000
number of transactions actually processed: 4000000/4000000
tps = 1681.615766 (including connections establishing)
tps = 1681.622950 (excluding connections establishing)

So now I am trying to figure out what is up with my hardware.