Refer to Chapter 3, Networking Performance Design, where the Selecting the correct virtual network adapter recipe talks about the trade-off factors in choosing the correct adapter.
For the best performance, use the VMXNET3 network adapter for operating systems in which it is supported. The VM must use a virtual hardware of version 7 or later, and VMware Tools must be installed in the guest operating system.
Note
If VMXNET3 is not supported in your guest operating system, use the enhanced VMXNET (which requires VMware Tools). Both the enhanced VMXNET (VMXNET2) and VMXNET3 support jumbo frames for better performance.
For the best networking performance, use network adapters that support hardware features, such as TCP checksum offload, TCP segmentation offload, and jumbo frames.
Ensure that the network adapters have the proper speed and duplex settings. Typically, for 10/100 NICs, set the speed and duplex. Make sure that the duplex is set to full duplex. For NICS...