Main Difference
The unit of information is very different from the other kind and therefore have to be understood in a more complicated way. The two terms discussed here which are Gigabit and Gigabyte can be explained according to the International Standard of Measurements definitions which are that Gigabit is a unit of information which is ten raised to the power nine, or in exact words, 2 raised to the power thirty bits. While, Gigabyte is the term which is used as the multiple for the term byte and can be defined as a unit of information which is also equal to ten raised to the power nine, or in exact words, 2 raised to the power thirty bytes.
Comparison Chart
| Basis of Distinction | Gigabit | Gigabyte |
| Definition | A unit of information which is ten raised to the power nine. | A unit of information which is ten raised to the power nine. |
| Digital Space | Equal to 1,000,000,000 bits | Equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes |
| Binary Space | 2 raised to the power 30 bits which are equal to 1,073,741,824 bits. | 2 raised to the power 30 byte which is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. |
| Usage | Rare | Common |
| Unit | Gb or Gbit | GB |
| Size | Smaller | 8 times bigger |
| Examples | Dedicated server hosting. | Disk space, RAM, and bandwidth |
Gigabit
This is a unit of information which is ten raised to the power nine, or in exact words, 2 raised to the power thirty bits. It is considered the bigger form of the term bit in several multiples and is used for digital information such as videos, images, and other types. It is also utilized in the computer storage or other devices such as a USB or DVD. The main catch in this word is Giga which is defined as the unit which is always 10 raised to the power nine, which is also known as one billion, or in number form as 1,000,000,000. The central unit of Gigabit is Gb, but it is also written as Gbit in some cases, such a not confusing it with other similar terms which use the word Giga with it. To give people a better idea of how much the size is, if we use the single byte as a standard, which is equal to 8 bit, then one Gigabit will be equal to 125 megabytes. It is close to the term gibibit, which has originated from the term binary prefix gibi and has the same order of magnitude as a gigabit and equals to 2 raised to the power 30 bits which are equal to 1,073,741,824 bits. To explain it a little more, this term is also used in the computer networking side, in which there is a Gigabit Ethernet, it is a term that describes several technologies which transmit from the Ethernet frame at the rate of 1GB per second, which becomes 1 billion bits in one second.
Gigabyte
This is the term which is used as the multiple for the term byte and can be defined as a unit of information which is also equal to ten raised to the power nine, or in exact words, 2 raised to the power thirty bytes. The central symbol which is used for this term is GB. This term is very famous in several fields of life such as computers, engineering, business and others where data is needed to be transferred or used. In computer technology, it is also utilized in a different way where it has the same order of magnitude as a gigabyte and equals to 2 raised to the power 30 byte which is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. This is a term which is bigger than the term Gigabit since one byte contains around 8 bits. The most common definition of this term is that it is 100 raised to the power 3 and is used in describing many things such as even movies. A usual movie will be of the size or around 4 to 8 GB and therefore many people have the idea of what it means but don’t exactly know the size explanation. This term was adopted by the international electrotechnical commission in 1997 and was added as a proper unit by IEEE in 2009. As explained earlier, there are two definitions of the word, one is in the decimal form in which is equal to 1 billion bytes and the second one is the binary definition in which it is equal to 2 raised to the power 30 bytes. The number two is used because of the binary factor.
Key Differences
- Both the terms Gigabit and Gigabyte are the units of measurements for digital storage space.
- The term Gigabit has a unit of Gb or Gbit while the term Gigabyte has the units of GB.
- A gigabyte is bigger than a Gigabit regarding the storage space they provide since one byte contains 8 bits.
- The more commonly used term out of the two is Gigabyte which is used for movies and video sizes while Gigabit is lesser used in comparison by people.
- One gigabyte is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes while one gigabit is equal to 1,000,000,000 bits for digital purposes.
- For binary uses, gigabyte can be defined as a quantity that equals to 2 raised to the power 30 byte which is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes while a gigabit equals to 2 raised to the power 30 bits which are equal to 1,073,741,824 bits.
- Gigabyte is mostly used for disk space, RAM and bandwidth while a gigabit is primarily used for dedicated server hosting.