Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 is listed as Tech Preview support for ESXi 5.0 Update 1 in the Guest OS compatibility guide. For more information on the Tech Preview support level, see Understanding guest operating system support levels (2015161).
Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 is fully supported for ESXi 5.1. For more information, see What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1.
Consider this guidance, which is based on testing Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 up to build 8224:
- Windows 8 Developer Preview / Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate does not boot on ESXi 5.0. To resolve this issue, you must install patch ESXi500-201112001 (Patch 02):
- Download and install ESXi500-201112001 (Patch 02). For more information, see VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201112001 (2007680).
- Create a new virtual machine configured for either Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2.
- Enable 3D graphics or do not install VMware’s WDDM video driver.
- Install Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 from Media.
- Install VMware Tools.Note: VMware does not recommend installing VMware’s WDDM video driver. Use the default VESA driver.
- If you experience a black screen after installing VMware’s WDDM video driver in a virtual machine with Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012, enable 3D graphics or reinstall the operating system and VMware Tools without VMware’s WDDM video driver.
- VMware does not currently recommend using USB xHCI with Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012. To work around this issue, remove the USB xHCI controller or use the USB EHCI+UHCI controller.Note: Any changes to the virtual hardware must be preceded by a full shutdown on the command line (shutdown /s /t 0 /full). Otherwise, the Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 hibernate-shutdown may not fully detect hardware changes and you may experience a blue diagnostic screen or triple fault at boot.
- The vmxnet3 virtual NIC does not work in a Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 virtual machine with ESXi 5.0. To work around this issue, use e1000e or e1000 NICs.
Ryan Mangan's IT Blog 
I’m not convinced that there are significant performance improvements from using vmxnet3 over E1000e…
There are benefit’s using VMXNET3 over E1000e, Ramses Smeyers has a blog showing his findings on a benchmark comparing both. http://ramses.smeyers.be/blog/?p=37. VMware’s performance evaluation Shows improvements when using VMXNET3 over VMXNET2 http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_vmxnet3_perf.pdf. I changed over to VMXNET3 in March this year and noticed a considerable improvement on the performance of VM CPU’s. You are more likely to see an improvement over a long period of time.
Best Regards,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about leven.
Regards
Hi,
Just a note on the bit “enable 3D graphics or reinstall the operating system and VMware Tools without VMware’s WDDM video driver.” I had this issue with 2012 R2, but was able to avoid the reinstall by starting in safe mode, then going to system> device manager> and rolling back the video driver
Cool,
thanks for sharing.
thank you. it helped me with an issue with the black screen after installing the w2012 on vmware.