When you mentioned lack of performance, do you mean how the heroes appear to stutter or not move smoothly on the map?

Yes, this is what I ment exactly! I even found a fix for that: going into game directory folder, opening homm2.gog with power iso, I extracted and replaced homm2.exe files. It runs better but still, not as nice as windows version.
I tried to change cpu, cycle, output, prebuffer and even frame skip settings in config file, but still no luck.

Hey, your solution worked! How did you know to think that it would make a difference? The heroes move smoothly on the map just like they do in HoMM I. It's the only thing that was noticable performance wise (I never played this game back in the day). Are there any other things that still need improvement?

Well I thought of taht, because I've been searching and downloding in vain all kinds of heroes 2 versions, patches and stuff like that in my quest to get cd opera working. Nothing worked. Still, I noticed, that all exe files dont runn the same. At first, I simply replaced gog exe with some random homm version, wich I had downloaded from torrents and it worked better. Then I dicovered taht homm2.gog is actualy iso file and thats how I found this solution.
I also red something about changing prebuffer to 100 (homm2 config file within game directory) to remove sound poping or something like that. But still, compare it to windows version,(wtch by the way is in the same homm2.gog iso file called heroes2w.exe) and I think it's no question, witch performs better.
And since I recently discovered how to ged cd opera to work in windows version, I kind of lost interest in gog version, wich is sad, because they got audo to work right (like in midi settings tracks get paused), but have those choppy and stuttering graphics. :/

Right, but didn't you say that the Windows version doesn't pause the adventure screen tracks?

I think I prefer the GOG version simply because of the audio. In all honesty, the performance is fine now (for me) once the .exe file was replaced.

I'm glad taht it helped!

dahbk, can you please upload fixed .exe file?

Sorry for such late answer.
If you own gog version, then you already have "fixed" exe inside homm2.gog within game directory. Just open it with power iso or deamon tools and copy/repalce it.

Thanks, it works! I can confirm to anyone that replacing heroes2.exe file extracted from homm2.gog (using any image mount program) with the file contained in the game folder immediately results in much better performance. Maybe GOG should modify the installer or at least make this instruction sticky because difference is huge.

Thank you!
But windows wersion still runs better, right?