Xeon E6540 's Advantages
Lower TDP (105W vs 500W)
Xeon 6972P 's Advantages
Released 14 years and 6 months late
Higher specification of memory (8800 vs 1333)
Newer PCIe version (5 vs 2)
Higher base frequency (2.4GHz vs 2GHz)
Larger L3 cache size (480MB vs 18MB)
More modern manufacturing process (5nm vs 45nm)