Nowadays, people are using very high transmission bit rates (multigigabit per second) to exploit the full bandwidth of single-mode fibre in direct detection optical fibre communications. Hence, it is convenient to develop efficient analytical tools to compute the jitter arising in multigigabit systems. These analytical tools may be generalised to the study of jitter inherent in laser transmitters. A general analytical method based on the moment generating function (MGF) was developed to compute and optimise the jitter performance in optical fibre regenerators. It is capable of dealing with any type of prefilter, nonlinearity, linear narrow band-pass filter, photo-detector device, optical pulse shape, output filter pulse shape and line-code. In this paper, we analyse the influence of circuit, quantum signal and dark current noises on jitter performance in binary direct detection optical receivers. It is seen that, in terms of jitter performance and with low signal to noise ratio, an APD, with quantum signal noise dominance, presents the best choice; a PIN, in which the circuit noise is dominant, is the next preferred choice and a Ge APD, with the dark current noise dominance, is the worst choice. The results obtained with application of this method allow the development of design rules for the optical receivers.