This is something which is not recommended or supported. There will be a reason why this driver is discontinued from esx5.x onwards. You could potentially be losing data or crashing the system.
If your environment is a test lab type of configuration, may be you can try the steps mentioned in VMware Front Experience: How to make your unsupported NIC work with ESXi 5.x or 6.0
Pick a supported driver VIB for reference and modify your 4.x driver contents accordingly.
Note: I have personally not tried this .