The short version:
I think VMware Workstation 8 and 9 somehow interferes with the nVidia drivers when installed on a host computer causing poor performance in at least Battlefield 3 and possibly other games as well. Frame rates are much lower than normal if Workstation 8 is installed. The game will cause the computer to freeze after 2-5 minutes of playing Battlefield 3 with no blue screen of death if Workstation 9 is installed.
Background info:
I've had Workstation 8 installed on this computer since it was released. Video game performance has never been great, but I thought it was because I was running an older GTX 260 video card at the time. I bought a GTX 690 over the summer and was a disappointed that I was only getting 25-40 frames per second on Battlefield 3 at the max settings. I thought maybe that was because I had a slightly older i7-940 CPU.
I finally upgraded to Worksation 9 the other day and now Battlefield 3 will freeze the entire computer after 2-5 minutes of playing. I uninstalled Workstation 9, and now all of the sudden Battlefield 3 runs great. I'm getting the 60-100 frames per second that I would expect to get out of this video card. Re-installed Workstation 9 again just to test and now the game freezes the computer again.
System info:
Windows 7 x64 Pro
i7-940
Gigabyte EX58-UD5
24GB RAM
GTX 690 (nVidia drivers 310.90)
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
VMware Workstation 8 then upgraded to version 9