What happens if you start up 5 processes that each use a GB of memory?
In theory you should just get some swapping but as I mentioned, OS/2 seems to use 32 bit variables that limit the size of virtual memory. The swap file itself is limited by using signed 32 bit based on what happens if you grow it more then 2GB (same thing as if you run out of disk space) based on experience. It makes sense as all file systems had a 2GB file limit before JFS.
The i386 is quite capable of handling 16 TB of virtual memory IIRC, but only 4 GB of address space