Do you mean the little sticker/cover.. If you remove it, it'll reveal a PhaseChange Thermal Compound. This stuff is the built in grease/paste(I don't know the specifics, DaddyG know's more). You don't really need to use your own grease, you could just use this stuff.
Sharptooth,
Older AMD chips suffer from teh same problems for temp reading as socket A and slot A amd chips, they don't support an onboard diode for temp reading. As far as your temps go, it is absolutely impossible to get your cpu running below ambient temperature.... I suspect that what you reported as your cpu temp is actually system temp, and what you said was your system temp is actually your cpu temp.
Mike