I have never ran a crossfire setup with afterburner. So I am not sure how to help you out. I would use a program like fraps to measure your FPS in games. Also download a 3Dmark or Heaven benchmark. Then you can verify that you are getting the correct scores for your setup. 69XX cards have VERY good scaling so hopefully its just that game. After you run some benchmarks or more tested games you can determine if something is wrong.

Looks like a patch for Shift Two Unleashed just came out and a driver update is coming out later.

For anyone else needing the patch:

http://www.needforspeed.com/downloads

Well, I installed one 6950 and had really good performance. If you can trust the MSI Afterburner, I was getting 60-65 fms running Shift2 Unleashed. Installed the second one and the fms went as low as 17....!

Double-check your setup:

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/p/19359816/19801896.aspx#19801896

You might also try installing the latest CFx game Profiles, or just create your own for NFS-S2 .

I ran the FutureMark and got 8300 plus, so it is right where all the reviews put their scores. Futuremark didn't recognize my 6950 driver as it appears to be a new driver not tested by them yet.

Speaking of FutureMark. I have two extra FutureMark 3DMARK 11 advance gamer benchmarks that came with the cards. A big 19.99 value that you download on-line.

 C_ronic and Tesla1856, if you are interested I can scatch the coupons and send you the code to enter for a free copy.

The web site is www.3dmark.com/offers/msi/

It appears the Shift Two game is the problem. Surfing GOOGLE shows everyone is having problems with the game in cfx and sli. The Shift Two patch just came out in the last few days and there is suppose to be a driver out later. I couldn't fine the blog on guru3d again, but a developer wrote about it and gave an example of how much better the Nvidia 480 will run. I think it was about double the frame rates without the fix.

Glad to hear your scores are on point! The cool thing about those 6950's is once you feel like they are not giving you enough performance you can bump em up to 6970 stats. :D If you dont mind let me know how your temps are whenever you can. I have a 6950 and might want to get a second down the road. The temps because of the little space has always been a concern. I hope your temps are in a decent range. The auto fan scaling in the afterburner im sure helps a lot if your not using it yet. Ill take a 3D mark 11 code if you aint gunna use it! If not thats cool too. It would be appreciated. You can add me/msg me if so. :) GOOD LUCK WITH THE NEW CARDS!!!!!!!!

I think you have to add me as a friend first. Ill add you :). Anyways when not running a 3D application crossfire turns off the second card completely to save power. The temps in the low 70's is actually very good for 2 of them so close. Anything below 90c under load is golden with 65-80c being preferable. Your idle is a little higher than my single card (45c) but thats to be expected with such little room. 55c is perfectly fine. You can disable crossfire in the CCC and then try to watch your bluray movie. I guess that would be worth a shot. 

You can add me/msg me if so. :)

So how do I msg you? I don't see a link to do that.

I just found out that PowerDVD will not play BluRay now. Regular DVD still works, but the quality isnt as good as it once was. Have a call into Cyberlink.

There are a lot of issues dealing with dual cards.

The temps run hotter than a 5870. At idle the 5870 was around 52-54 with auto fan control but I think my core and memory clocks were somehow stuck in full mode because they never went below 450/1250 mhz even at idle. The core most of the time stayed at 850 as well. 

I keep the 6950 fan running at 59 percent to keep the temps at 56 at Idle. I may back off a little on the fan but the noise level isn't as bad as some of the reviews made it out to be. With load the temps went as high as 72-73 but I don't remember the fan speed at the time. I don't believe the fans went above 70 or so. What is interesting is that the second GPU seems to shut itself down when the loads are light. The Afterburner wont even register the temp for the second card at this point. (makes me nervous) Watching the watts on my APC software confirms the card isn't pulling much of a load. I estimate around 15 - 20 watts in this state.

 Afterburner shows zero fan speed, usage, temp, core clock, and memory clock, on the graph for the second card when the second GPU idles. The fan for the second GPU then falls to 20 percent and stays there. If I load it back up the fan sinc's with the master GPU. When the fans are matched the temps stay within one degree of each other.

I added one three inch fan inside the case inside the PCI plastic cover that swings open. The air blows 27cfm across the GPU's. I'm thinking of adding one more fan just above the PCI fan to help keep the air moving. The two cards together with load heat up the case/room after a short time.

I tried to disconnect the power plugs and crossfire connector to run on one card. I wanted to check the performance again and see if the PowerDVD would work. Seems the mobo didn't like that and hollered at me. Guess I have to remove it completely.

Let me know how to msg you with the code.

Hey!

I think you have to add me as a friend first. Ill add you :). Anyways when not running a 3D application crossfire turns off the second card completely to save power. The temps in the low 70's is actually very good for 2 of them so close. Anything below 90c under load is golden with 65-80c being preferable. Your idle is a little higher than my single card (45c) but thats to be expected with such little room. 55c is perfectly fine. You can disable crossfire in the CCC and then try to watch your bluray movie. I guess that would be worth a shot.

The disabling of cfx in CCC did the trick. Cyberlink and BluRay working fine now. I'll have to see if Shift Two works better now. The Afterburner software seems to disconnect as well. I had to use the CCC overdrive section to increase the cards fan speed.

I am noticing however, that while typing this message the system seems sluggish. Type is slow to show up on screen, jittery.

Wait... you used the crossfire bridge caps to wedge some space in between your cards? Because I have 5870's, similar card and the space issues have been killing me temp wise. I have to try this when I get my second card back :)

Yea the temperature difference between the 2 cards is a known issue with all Aurora's regardless of what two cards it is. Its just something we have to accept :/ I am not sure why your system seems sluggish after disabling crossfire. That should not happen at all. Maybe when you disabled it you had background applications( game,movie, etc.) open and they need to be reset with the new settings? Thats probably not it but its worth a shot. I would google it and see if you find anything.