Intel Xeon E5 2696 v3 's Advantages
Released 4 years and 6 months late
Higher specification of memory (2133 vs 1333)
Newer PCIe version (3 vs 2)
Higher base frequency (2.3GHz vs 2GHz)
Larger L3 cache size (45MB vs 18MB)
More modern manufacturing process (22nm vs 45nm)
Xeon E6540 's Advantages
Lower TDP (105W vs 145W)