A gigabyte (GB) is a unit of digital storage equal to 1,024 megabytes (MB) or approximately 1 billion bytes. It is a standard measurement used across operating systems, storage devices, and cloud platforms to represent capacity and file size.
Gigabytes are commonly used to describe the size of applications, operating systems, high-resolution media, and storage space. For example, a 4K movie can be 10–20 GB, and smartphones today often come with 64 GB to 512 GB of internal storage.
In both hardware and networking, gigabytes serve as a reference point for system requirements, file transfers, and usage limits. Whether you're managing a cloud backup, downloading large files, or installing software, understanding gigabytes helps gauge how much space or bandwidth is needed.
A megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital data equal to 1,024 kilobytes (KB) or 1,048,576 bytes. It is commonly used to represent file sizes, especially for images, documents, audio files, and smaller applications.
In practical terms, a high-quality JPEG photo might be around 2–5 MB, while a minute of MP3 audio at standard bitrate can take up about 1 MB. Email attachments, app downloads, and storage space are often measured in megabytes, making it a familiar benchmark for everyday computing.
Although gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB) are more frequently referenced for modern storage, megabytes still play an important role in performance-sensitive environments. They're useful for monitoring bandwidth usage, managing mobile data plans, and designing efficient digital systems where minimizing file size is critical.
SI (Base 10):
Formula: Megabyte = Gigabyte ÷ "Number of Gigabytes in 1 Megabyte"
Calculation: 4.75 × 1000 = 4750 Megabyte
Binary (Base 2):
Formula: Megabyte = Gigabyte ÷ "Number of Gigabytes in 1 Megabyte"
Calculation: 4.75 × 1024 = 4864 Megabyte
| Gigabyte | Megabyte (Binary) | Megabyte (SI) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,024 | 1,000 |
| 2 | 2,048 | 2,000 |
| 3 | 3,072 | 3,000 |
| 4 | 4,096 | 4,000 |
| 5 | 5,120 | 5,000 |
| 6 | 6,144 | 6,000 |
| 7 | 7,168 | 7,000 |
| 8 | 8,192 | 8,000 |
| 9 | 9,216 | 9,000 |
| 10 | 10,240 | 10,000 |
| 11 | 11,264 | 11,000 |
| 12 | 12,288 | 12,000 |
| 13 | 13,312 | 13,000 |
| 14 | 14,336 | 14,000 |
| 15 | 15,360 | 15,000 |