According to a method and apparatus taught herein, a Rake receiver circuit selectively operates with or without colored interference compensation, in dependence on current operating conditions. For example, in one embodiment the Rake receiver circuit comprises one or more processing circuits that are configured to generate Rake combining weights in a first mode of operation as first combining weights calculated from channel estimates corresponding to a set of Rake signal fingers. In a second mode, the processing circuit(s) generate the Rake combining weights as compensated combining weights obtained by compensating the first combining weights with second combining weights calculated from colored interference estimates corresponding to a set of Rake probing fingers.