The paper presents a detailed analysis of structure-hardness relations in hard and superhard nanostructured Ti(Al,V)N-x films with a low content of Al (5 at.%) and V (2 at.%). The Ti(Al,V)N-x films were prepared by d.c. reactive magnetron sputtering. Special attention is devoted to the energy E-pi delivered to the growing film by bombarding ions. It was found that (1) Ti(AI,V)N-x films form a superhard material with hardness H greater than or equal to 40 GPa; (2) superhard Ti(Al,V)N-x films are: (i) poly-oriented films characterized with at least two broad, low-intensity X-ray reflections, i.e. are composed of small grains of different crystallographic orientations; (ii) exhibit a low compressive macrostress sigmaless than or equal to -2 GPa; and (iii) formed at higher values of E-pi greater than or equal to 0.5 MJ/cm(3) and low values of a total sputtering gas pressure P-T less than or equal to 0.5 Pa; (3) a minimum energy E-pi (min), which is needed to form the superhard film, is a necessary condition but not the sufficient one; (4) the superhard films with a maximum hardness are characterized by the optimum structure which is formed if sufficient energy E-pi greater than or equal to E-pi (min) = 0.5 MJ/cm(3) is delivered. The main result of this study is finding that nanostructured materials can be superhard also in the case when they are composed of small grains of the same material but of different crystallographic orientations. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.