Xeon E5540 's Advantages
Higher specification of memory (1066 vs 3)
Higher base frequency (2.533GHz vs 2GHz)
Lower TDP (80W vs 95W)
Intel Xeon E5 2640 v2 's Advantages
Released 4 years and 6 months late
Newer PCIe version (3 vs 2)
Larger L3 cache size (20MB vs 8MB)
More modern manufacturing process (22nm vs 45nm)