Then the G3 should impress you more, because it is essentially a refined 603 with improved cache. People forget that the G3 was more evolutionary than revolutionary.
The 604 was a real grunt of a CPU, but it just doesn't show this muscle on many typical Mac workloads, and the 603/G3 ran rings around it on integer performance (but the 603/G3 have a comparatively weak FPU, and are poor choices for multiprocessor systems -- see, for example, all the trouble Be had with the BeBox). On the other hand, in the Apple Network Server it was an excellent choice, as was it in IBM's RS/6000 line.