What does the box or manual recommend for CPU? Mobygames states 8088/8086 but that seems like it would be way too slow. At the same time, a 386DX seems like it would have the shopkeeper and guildmaster animations running too fast.

I think 286 is bare minimum for this game.
086 was good for CGA quality games.

PC AT with 640K memory and VGA/MCGA, EGA or Tandy graphics was enough.

I played M&M3 in 1991 with a 386sx20 and it worked very well.

I know that with downclocking and cache disabling I can get a Pentium to the perfect speed for Wing Commander 1 which was a highly speed sensitive 386 game. However, at that same speed, or even a bit slower the animations are too fast in this game. I didn't think there would be such a difference between SX and DX for this type of a game.

Since we're talking about physical copies of this game, does anybody know the type and number of floppy disks the game was originally distributed on? (I'm also curious about 1, 2, 4, and 5 (non-CD, of course).)

Also, how long does it take to install the game?

5 floppy disk at 720ko with my french version from 1991.

I played it back in the days on my Pentium 133 and the game worked well in spite of the far faster CPU.

I have a Pentium 133. The game does work on faster machines -- it's not that there are glitches or breaks -- it is just that NPC animations are way too fast, that's all.

Have you tried running it in a virtual machine to simulate an older pc?

This was in real DOS on a Socket 7 CPU downclocked to 133 with all caches disabled -- SpeedSys rating of 7.00, with 3DBench 8.4, PCPBench at 2.7.

So I've just started collecting Might and Magic games in their original boxes, and it just so happened that MM3 came in the mail today! So the USA release comes with 3 disks of 640k 3.5" floppy disks.

I couldn't find anything on the box or anything included about the processor requirements, sorry. I don't know too much about the technical aspects :p.

MM5: 8 3.5 disks, 286 w/ 2MB RAM