There are two common definitions for how many megabytes (MB) are in a gigabyte (GB):
- Decimal (SI) system: 1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes. This is often used in telecommunications, storage device marketing, and general data measurement
- Binary (computer) system: 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes. This is used in computing contexts where data is measured in powers of 2, such as RAM or operating system file sizes
In summary:
System| 1 GB equals how many MB?
---|---
Decimal (SI)| 1000 MB
Binary (Computing)| 1024 MB
The binary definition arises because computers operate in base 2, so 1 MB = 1024 KB and 1 GB = 1024 MB (where 1 KB = 1024 bytes)
. Therefore, depending on context, a gigabyte can be either 1000 or 1024 megabytes.
