PAE does have some benefits for x86 (admittedly, they also exist in amd46 IIRC). The big one (aside from virtual memory space) is the NX bit. You can set regio

PAE does have some benefits for x86 (admittedly, they also exist in amd46 IIRC). The big one (aside from virtual memory space) is the NX bit. You can set regions of memory noexec. Imagine doing this to things like the stack, or the heap. Done properly, you can mitigate the risk from buffer overflows (the program will simply crash if it ends up in the wrong spot).