I don't know if this is the same situation, but I ran into similar 
difficulties when I tried to upgrade my system with a 8800GT video card. 
Turns out that the 8800GT's backward compatibility with PCI-E v1.1 didn't 
really work with the motherboard that I was using (an Asrock 775Dual VSTA). 
I ended up upgrading the motherboard in my system in order to use the new 
video card, though after the fact, EVGA made available a new firmware that 
apparently fixed this issue.  As far as I know all subsequent 8800GTs 
included this firmware fix.

In any case, this sounds like a compatibility issue between a relatively new 
video card and an older motherboard.  While the card should provide the 
backward compatibility to work with any PCI-E video card slot, this doesn't 
always seem to be the case.  All you can do to try to confirm this is to 
throw out a wider net with Google and see what you can come up with.  I'd 
search for anything to do with 9800GTs and motherboard compatibility issues, 
and I'd see if I could figure out what manufacturer and chipset the Gateway 
was using, in order to see if any issues match up with your system setup.

John Sproule

------------- Original Message Below -------------


Date:    Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:42:59 -0500
From:    jimi moore <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: trouble installing video card

I'm trying to install an xfx 9800gt into my sons gateway machine model
#825gm. It won't boot...just a black screen. We get the one short beep code
saying all is good then it just repeats over and over.
The MB does not have an integrated video chip. It came with a ati card.
I have a OCZ gamestream 700 watt PS. Not sure of the amps but I know this is
well above the requirements for the 9800 gt.
 We have uninstalled all previous vid drivers.
It has a pcie slot that we've been running a evga 7950 for 2+ years but that
card has burned out. We put the preinstalled card, a ati radeon x300 SE back
in and it works fine. We tried the 9800 in my hp  machine and it worked
perfect.
We updated the bios to the august 2008 version. We did a update for the
chipset from 2008. Neither gateway or xfx can figure it out. Can anybody
here please
help?

thanks,

jimi

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