Official link to VMware Workstation Player 12.5.8 download https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_workstation_player/12_0
I would not call Nehalem EP series bad; but rather outdated and lacking in features.
Apart from missing the VMX unrestricted guest feature (which is closest a VM can get to running bare metal on the CPU), CPUs before Westmere also don't have AES and carryless quad word multiply instructions which make encryption/decryption a lot faster. The GHz clock and core/thread count race is not the only game to look out for. Extended Page Table (EPT) is another CPU feature that makes memory intensive VMs run faster as there is no need for hypervisor software shadow paging. EPT is required by the VM unrestricted guest and EPT is required to run 64-bit nested VMs.
Note that not all CPUs after Westmere are guaranteed to have these features (example some of the Bay Trail Pentium N CPUs released in 2013/2014 don't have EPT and AES-NI at all).