You don't mention if it is by itself and you're just looking at it or if
it is inserted into a motherboard. If in your hand, you can't tell
unless, like for an AMD, it got burned up because the heatsink came off
it. If in a motherboard, the BIOS text and/or beep codes should
indicate a bad CPU; see http://www.bioscentral.com.

OK, its in situ - but I'm not getting any beeps at all. What, if anything
does that mean for the CPU? I guess the bios beeps _after_ the CPU starts
working, so does an absence of bios beeps mean that the CPU is _not_
working - I'm getting no boot / no video.