No, you will lose access to any current exploits if you update your SysNAND to 9.7. If you're talking about EmuNAND, you can't yet use Gateway with an EmuNAND higher than 9.6 because Gateway has yet to release an update for it. You can, however, use RxTools EmuNAND on the latest firmware version 9.7, but you can't use any homebrew or ROMs or unsigned stuff with it as of yet.