The big main game changer there is engine design - (diesel)- indirect injection vs direct injection. The old indirect engines dump large amounts of soot into the oil, where as the newer direct injection engines are much, much better in this regard.
As an example - my old landcruiser with a 1HZ engine, pushing oil change intervals out to 10,000km resulted in soot levels up to nearly 3% (typically around 2% however)
(bear in mind a 10L oil sump as well)
My D3 2.7 on a 15,000km oil change only has a soot load of 0.6% for a sump half the size. That's a big difference in contamination levels

