Gibibits to Gigabytes (Gibit to GB)

1 gibibit equals 0.134217728 gigabytes exactly.

How to convert gibibits to gigabytes

To convert gibibits to gigabytes, multiply the number of gibibits by 0.134217728. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply gigabytes by 7.450580597 (rounded).

gigabytes = gibibits × 0.134217728

Example: 10 gibibits = 1.34217728 gigabytes.

Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.

About these units

Gibibit (Gibit)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 1,073,741,824 bits.

Equal to 2^30 bits, or 1,073,741,824 bits, the gibibit (Gibit) is the unit behind many memory chip densities. Dividing by eight gives 134,217,728 bytes, which is 128 mebibytes. The gibi prefix, from the first two letters of giga plus bi, was among the first three binary prefixes the IEC approved in December 1998.

Its decimal cousin, the gigabit, is 10^9 bits, so a gibibit is about 7.4 percent larger. That gap is why a quantity described in gigabits and the same quantity in binary units can differ noticeably when the two conventions are mixed. Telecom speeds are quoted in decimal gigabits per second, while the gibi names exist so that a binary count can be stated without ambiguity.

The symbol Gibit is a bit count; the byte equivalent, with capital B, is the gibibyte, GiB, which is eight times larger.

1 gibibit = 134,217,728 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Bit

Gigabyte (GB)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal). Storage manufacturers and phone makers use this definition.

The gigabyte is where the decimal-versus-binary dispute turned into lawsuits. Drive makers advertise capacity in decimal units, so a 500 GB drive holds 500 billion bytes, but Windows reports sizes in binary units and shows about 465.7 of what it labels GB for the same drive. Early challenges against Western Digital and Seagate were settled, with Western Digital adding disclaimers that usable capacity may differ from the advertised figure.

A 2019 lawsuit was decided in the manufacturers' favor, with the court relying on the decimal definition. For scale, one gigabyte holds roughly an hour of standard-definition video at 2.2 Mbit/s. A single-layer DVD+R holds about 4.7 GB and a single-layer Blu-ray about 25 GB. RAM is still often sized in binary gigabytes, which the IEC would call gibibytes.

1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Gibibyte

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.