1. 'She told me something' means that she gave me some information. The focus is on the content.
2. 'She said something to me' focuses on the words she said. We know nothing about the content.
Perhaps there was no content - maybe she just said 'Hi, how are you?'. If you say 'Hi, how are you?', you are saying something, but you are not telling anyone anything because there is no transmission of information.
Maybe you don't know if there was any content. For example, 'She said something to me, but I couldn't hear what she was saying' or 'She said something to me, but her accent was so strong that I didn't understand her'.
In your examples, there is no real difference, because they both involve an exchange of information.