Just bought an AMD XP1700 chip and Taisol Cooler, which has a tab of paste on the bottom of it...can I rely on this, or should I go for an additional thermal paste. Or...is the tab of glue like stuff actually good enough...what is it? Tidy!

Put as much paste as you can on it, AMD c.p.u's are renowned for getting way too hot.

You dont know what your talking about Col. The idea is to have a very thin layer between thr CPU and HSF. What i would suggest is scraping off the stuff that was on there and replacing it with a thin layer of Artic Silver 2 or 3 on the CPU core. The reason for themal paste is to fill all gaps between the CPU and HSF to increase heat transfer, but the more you put on the less good it does. The stuff that comes on it probably isn't up to the job. It is usually silocon based but its not an adhesive.

Maybe let Col put as much thermal grease on as he can on his own AMD CPU to see how much high a temperature he will get and whether his CPU will be still running by the time he posts his next comments. Paper thin and even layer is enough. More than that may cause lesser-than-perfect amount of heat transfer from the cpu core ( die) onto the heatsink; and this will shorten the life of the cpu.