Poll of the Day > so the diff between gigabytes and gigabits is what?

(+) Yeah! (+)

gigabytes is a measure of size and gigabits is a measure of data...transfer...rate?
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Gigabit is a billion bits, gigabyte is a billion bytes. A byte is 8 bits. So a gigabyte is eight times larger. Gigabits are usually used in transfer speeds like you siad
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I believe thats the way it is
Plus you divide the bit by 8 to get the byte size
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AnnoyedCops posted...

Gigabit is a billion bits, gigabyte is a billion bytes. A byte is 8 bits. So a gigabyte is eight times larger. Gigabits are usually used in transfer speeds like you siad

Also--
GB = Gigabyte
Gb = Gigabit
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"Bit" is a truncation of "binary digit." A byte is 8 bits (so a total of 256 possible data values). A gigabyte is 8 gigabits, and either can be used to indicate data transfer rates if you add "per second" to them. Internet speeds are most commonly quoted in megabits or gigabits because it means the ISP gets to boast about having a bigger number.

There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

captpackrat posted...

There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

My favourite was always "hexidecimal is easy, you only have to count to f"
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_AdjI_ posted...

Internet speeds are most commonly quoted in megabits or gigabits because it means the ISP gets to boast about having a bigger number.

Or because data doesn't have to be sent in bytes so bits represents the nature of data transfer better.
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_AdjI_ posted...

A byte is 8 bits

Not necessarily. The current common standard is 8 bits to a byte, but a byte doesn't have to have 8 bits.
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It's always amused me that half of a byte is a nibble.

captpackrat posted...

It's always amused me that half of a byte is a nibble.

Thats obvs not true
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FatalAccident posted...

captpackrat posted...

It's always amused me that half of a byte is a nibble.

Thats obvs not true

In Canada they call it a biddle

Fuckin weirdos

If you think gigabytes/gigabits is confusing, wait until you learn about gibibytes (GiB).

A gigabyte is 10^9 (1,000,000,000) bytes, while a gibibyte is 2^30 (1,073,741,824) bytes.

Kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, etc all all based on powers of 1000 (or 10^3)
Kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes, tebibytes, pebibytes, etc are all based on powers of 1024 (or 2^10)

The confusion between GB & GiB is why hard drives appear to never have the capacity stated on the box. Hard drive manufacturers list capacity in decimal gigabytes (128 GB is 128,000,000,000 bytes), while Windows erroneously uses the term gigabyte for binary gigabytes (gibibytes). 128,000,000,000 bytes is about 119 GiB.