Gigabytes to Gibibits (GB to Gibit)
1 gigabyte equals 7.450580597 gibibits (rounded).
How to convert gigabytes to gibibits
To convert gigabytes to gibibits, multiply the number of gigabytes by 7.450580597. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply gibibits by 0.134217728.
gibibits = gigabytes × 7.450580597
Example: 10 gigabytes = 74.50580597 gibibits.
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
Gigabyte (GB)
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
Gibibit (Gibit)
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
Related conversions
- Gibibits to gigabytes (reverse)
- Gigabytes to bytes
- Gigabytes to kilobytes
- Gigabytes to megabytes
- Gigabytes to terabytes
- Gigabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to petabytes
- Gigabytes to kibibytes
- Gigabytes to mebibytes
- Gigabytes to gibibytes
- Gigabytes to tebibytes
- Gigabytes to kilobits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Bytes to gibibits
- Kilobytes to gibibits
- Megabytes to gibibits
- Terabytes to gibibits
See all digital storage units.