Intel Xeon D 1540 's Advantages
Released 5 years late
Newer PCIe version (3 vs 2)
More modern manufacturing process (14nm vs 45nm)
Lower TDP (45W vs 130W)
Xeon X7542 's Advantages
Higher specification of memory (1333 vs 4)
Higher base frequency (2.666GHz vs 2GHz)
Larger L3 cache size (18MB vs 1.5MB)