I know I’m a little bit slow on the uptake on this, but I’ve only just got round to implementing the recommendations from vinf.net after reading the blog post ages ago.
Not being able to run ESX 3.5 in a VM was a big blow for me as I do a lot of test and development on my home PC. This article now goes most of the way to getting back to the level of 3.0.2 in 6.0 VMware workstation.

Check out the comments for some tweaks to get 6.5 beta out of debug mode.