Intel Xeon D 1541 's Advantages
Released 6 years and 8 months late
Newer PCIe version (3 vs 2)
More modern manufacturing process (14nm vs 45nm)
Lower TDP (45W vs 80W)
Xeon E5540 's Advantages
Higher specification of memory (1066 vs 4)
Higher base frequency (2.533GHz vs 2.1GHz)
Larger L3 cache size (8MB vs 1.5MB)