It is pretty hard to beat 531c. That of course was a very expensive frame once.
The currently fashionable 4130 hipster fixies won’t come close. A Fuji Track will though.
I think that the difference between the alloys is less of a factor than the use of larger diameter tubes (and I suspect in the case of the Pompino and others like it, thicker gauge tubes).
Bez commented above about how older steel frames were too flexy in his size, and the other side of that coin is that the skinny tubes (not just 531) probably gave an optimal balance of flex, compliance and stiffness in the most common frame sizes for the majority of riders. For cyclecampers and for top racers, the frames that could be built with such tubes were probably often not stiff enough for their liking, but the frames were ideal for the rest of us.
Since the 1990s when road racers started to switch to oversized, very stiff and very light aluminium frames, and subsequently carbon, the tubing manufacturers have been focusing on developing steel tubes which could compete with aluminium and carbon in terms of weight and stiffness, leading to tubesets like oversized 953.
At the same time the use of tubing like oversized 4130, possibly in conjunction with EN testing, has resulted in heavier, less ‘nice’ to ride general mass produced frames compared with the skinny tubes of old, although it has resulted in better frames for the heavy load carrying cyclecampers and for taller people like Bez.