What is a gigabyte compared to a megabyte

Units help us understand different quantities and maintain track of how much a thing is. Digital information is also measured in units and some standard units are described using a basic unit called bytes. A gigabyte is formed of two words Giga and byte. Here, Giga means ten raised to the power of ten. The use of prefixes like these is prevalent in measurement, for example, a kilo is a prefix that means one thousand. In terms of Megabyte and Gigabyte, the base word is byte and prefixes are Mega and Giga respectively.

Megabyte vs Gigabyte

The main difference between Megabyte and Gigabyte is that a megabyte means 1 million bytes of data whereas a gigabyte is one billion bytes of data. The two prefixes mega and Giga are multipliers with values of 10 raised to the power of nine and Giga means 10 raised to the power of six respectively.

What is a gigabyte compared to a megabyte

According to SI units’ definition, megabyte 1 million bytes but in computing different definitions are used. According to one definition, one megabyte equals two raised to the power 20 bytes. The definition is used by Microsoft to measure computer memory. It also has a mixed definition in which 1 megabyte equals 1000 multiplied by 1024. It is used to measure the capacity of an HD floppy disk.

A gigabyte is a unit that is also used to measure memory. It is used to measure digital memory. The SI units define it as one billion bytes, but it also has some other definitions based on the same bases as megabytes. It is defined in terms of a base of two raised to the power of thirty. The definition in terms of base two is used by Microsoft to define computer memory.

Comparison Table Between Megabyte and Gigabyte

Parameters of ComparisonMegabyteGigabyte
SI unit definitionIt is equal to one million bytes.It is equal to one billion bytes.
Definition with base two1 MB equals 1,048,576.1 GB equals 1,073,741,824.
Mixed definitionIt has a mixed definition which equals 1000*1024.It has no mixed definition.
ComparisonIt is a lesser quantity compared to GigabyteIt is a greater quantity compared to Megabyte.
ExampleOne YouTube video of 5 minutes with 1080p quality equals 100MB.The size of the DVD is 4.5GB if it is single-layered.

What is Megabyte?

A unit used to measure digital information with a value equal to a million bytes is called a megabyte. The basic unit of measurement of digital information is byte but due to the need for other definitions to describe larger amounts of digital information megabyte was adopted. Megabyte has different definitions as well. It is also defined in terms of a base of two. When we raise the power of two to twenty it equals 1,048,576. The value is near to 1 million and is used by Microsoft to define computer memory.

The mixed definition of megabytes includes two concepts together. In this method, we multiply one thousand with one thousand twenty-four. It equals 1024000. This mixed-method is used to measure the capacity of HD floppy disk. The disk with a memory of 1.44MB is equal to 1474560 (the size is 3.5 inches). The difference between the capacity is because of the fact that this definition is used to describe the formatted memory.

Megabyte is given a standard definition by the international system of units which is equal to 1 million bytes but the term is not widely accepted due to the reason that there are multiple definitions as described above. These definitions are in use due to convention and historical reasons of convenience.

What is Gigabyte?

Gigabyte is another unit that evolved to measure larger quantities. It is also a multiple of a byte. One gigabyte is equal to one billion bytes, which is defined according to the International System of Units. The definition which uses base two to define the quantity is used by Microsoft to define computer memory. The definition which uses the base 10 is strictly used to define a gigabyte as directed by IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).

The advent of the gigabyte range caused a lot of confusion as earlier decimal prefixes. The controversy arose due to the gigabyte specification being lesser than those expressed by decimal prefixes. The value of one gigabyte is equal to ninety-three percent of Gibibyte which is reported by the computer operating systems to be lesser. If the specification on the label says 400 GB is equal to only 372 Gibibyte. It causes confusion as operating systems report mebibyte as a gigabyte. 

The lawsuit against manufacturers by consumers has ended in favor of manufacturers as the court held the value of one gigabyte equal to ten raised to the power of nine. The quiet dismissed the binary definition over the decimal definition and declared it to be the legal definition.

Main Differences Between Megabyte and Gigabyte

  1. Megabyte and gigabyte are both multiple the byte which is the basic unit for digital information but they differ in the numbers they define.
  2. A megabyte is smaller in comparison to a gigabyte as a megabyte only equals 10 raised to the power of six and a gigabyte equals 10 raised to the power of nine.
  3. One megabyte can be defined as a mixed value that equals 1000 multiplied by 1024 whereas a gigabyte has no such definition.
  4. The legal definition of one Gigabyte is equal to 10 raised to the power of nine, whereas Megabyte has no legal definition as such.
  5. Different versions of megabytes are used to define digital information whereas the SI definition for a gigabyte is considered standard.

Conclusion

Due to the change in usage and the need for condensed form to define large quantities we invent a different form of units. Megabyte and Gigabyte are examples of such condensed forms. The basic unit for both of them is bytes. One differs from the other in terms of the prefixes that give different values. The mega prefix is nothing but a multiple which equals 1 million whereas Giga is equal to 1 billion. These definitions are in accordance with the international system of units and are called decimal units.

 Different definitions are in use such as the mixed definition of megabytes which equals 1024000 and is used to define the storage of HD floppy disk. The binary definition is used by Microsoft to define the memory computer disk.

References

AskAnyDifference HomeClick here

Search for "Ask Any Difference" on Google. Rate this post!

The size of information in the computer is measured in kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. In this section, we'll look at common sizes you would see in real life and learn how to reason about various numbers of bytes.

Kilobyte or KB

  • Kilobyte KB - about 1 thousand bytes
  • As we know, 1 byte is one typed character
    - see below for why the phrase "about 1 thousand" is required here
  • An email without images is about 2 KB
  • A five page paper might be 100 KB
  • Text is compact, requiring few bytes compared to images or sound or video
  • e.g. 23,000 bytes is about 23 KB

One kilobyte (KB) is a collection of about 1000 bytes. A page of ordinary Roman alphabetic text takes about 2 kilobytes to store (about one byte per letter). A typical short email would also take up just 1 or 2 kilobytes. Text is one of the most naturally compact types of data at about one byte required to store each letter. In non-roman alphabets, such as Mandarin, the storage takes up 2 or 4 bytes per "letter" which is still pretty compact compared to audio and images.

Megabyte or MB

  • Megabyte (MB) - about 1 million bytes
  • aka about 1000 KB
  • MP3 audio is about 1 megabyte per minute
  • A high quality digital picture is about 2-5 megabytes
  • e.g. 45,400 KB is 45.4 MB

One megabyte is about 1 million bytes (or about 1000 kilobytes). An MP3 audio file of a few minutes or a 10 million pixel image from a digital camera would typically take up few megabytes. The rule of thumb for MP3 audio is that 1 minute of audio takes up about 1 megabyte. Audio and image and video data typically stored in "compressed" form, MP3 being an example. We'll talk about how compression works later. A data CD disk stores about 700 MB. The audio on a CD is not compressed, which is why it takes so much more space than the MP3. The series of bits are represented as spiral path of tiny pits in the silver material in the disk. Imagine that each pit is interpreted as a 0, and the lack of a pit is a 1 as the spiral sequence is read. Fun fact: the whole spiral on a CD is over 5km long.

Math - You Try It

  • 2,000,000 bytes is about how many MB?

    2,000,000 bytes = 2 MB

  • 23,000 KB is about how many MB?

    23,000 KB = 23 MB (1000 KB = 1 MB)

  • 500 KB is about how many MB?

    500 KB = 0.5 MB

Gigabyte or GB

  • Gigabyte GB = about a billion bytes
  • aka about 1000 MB
  • GB is a common unit for modern hardware
  • e.g. 4000 MB = 4 GB
  • An ordinary computer might have: -4 GB or RAM

    -256 GB of persistent storage

  • A DVD disk has a capacity 4.7GB (single layer)
  • -Figure 2 GB per hour of video (varies greatly)
  • A flash drive might hold 32 GB
  • A hard drive might hold 750 GB

One gigabyte (GB) is about 1 billion bytes, or 1 thousand megabytes. A computer might have 4 GB of RAM. A flash memory card used in a camera might store 16 GB. A DVD movie is roughly 4-8 GB.

  • Math - You Try It
  • How many GB is 4,000,000,000 bytes?

    4 billion bytes = 4 GB

  • Say you have many 5 MB JPEG images. How many fit on a 16 GB flash drive?

    (convert everything to MB) 16 GB is 16,000 MB

    16,000 / 5 = 3,200

Terabyte or TB

One terabyte (TB) is about 1000 gigabytes, or roughly 1 trillion bytes. You can buy 4 TB hard drives today, so we are beginning the time when this term comes in to common use. Gigabyte used to be an exotic term too, until Moore's law made it common.

Gigahertz - Speed, not Bytes

One gigahertz is 1 billion cycles per second (a megahertz is a million cycles per second). Gigahertz is a measure of speed, very roughly the rate that at a CPU can do its simplest operation per second. Gigahertz does not precisely tell you how quickly a CPU gets work done, but it is roughly correlated. Higher gigahertz CPUs also tend to be more expensive to produce and they use more power (and as a result give off more heat) - a challenge for putting fast CPUs in small devices like phones. The ARM company is famous for producing chips that are very productive with minimal power and heat. Almost all cell phones currently use ARM CPUs.

Kilobyte / Megabyte / Gigabyte Word Problems

You should be comfortable doing simple arithmetic to figure MB / GB sizes, just as you should be able to do basic computations with second, miles, kilos and so forth.

Basic plan: before adding measures X and Y, convert them to be in the same units.

Word ProblemsSolution
Alice has 600 MB of data. Bob has 2000 MB of data. Will it all fit on Alice's 4 GB thumb drive?

Yes it fits: 600 MB + 2000 MB is 2600 MB. 2600 MB is 2.6 GB, so it will fit on the 4 GB drive no problem. Equivalently we could say that the 4 GB drive has space for 4000 MB.

Alice has 100 small images, each of which is 500 KB. How much space do they take up overall in MB?

100 times 500 KB is 50000 KB, which is 50 MB.

Your ghost hunting group is recording the sound inside a haunted Stanford classroom for 20 hours as MP3 audio files. About how much data will that be, expressed in GB?

MP3 audio takes up about 1 MB per minute. 20 hours, 60 minutes/hour, 20 * 60 yields 1200 minutes. So that's about 1200 MB, which is 1.2 GB.

It's convenient within the computer to organize things in groups of powers of 2. For example, 210 is 1024, and so a program might group 1024 items together, as a sort of "round" number of things within the computer. The term "kilobyte" above refers to this group size of 1024 things. However, people also group things by thousands -- 1 thousand or 1 million items.

There's this problem with the word "megabyte": does it mean 1024 * 1024 bytes, i.e. 220, which is 1,048,576, or does it mean exactly 1 million, 1000 * 1000. It's just a 5% difference, but marketers tend to prefer the 1 million interpretation, since it makes their hard drives etc. appear to hold a little bit more. Also, the difference grows larger and larger for the gigabyte and terabyte sizes. In an attempt to fix this, the terms "kibibyte" "mebibyte" "gibibyte" "tebibyte" have been introduced to specifically mean the 1024 based units (see the Wikipedia article on kibibytes). These terms do not seem to have caught on very strongly thus far. If nothing else, remember that terms like "megabyte" have this little wiggle room in them between the 1024 and 1000 based meanings. We will never grade off for this distinction. "About a million" will be our close-enough interpretation for "megabyte".