diff --git a/model/models/mistral3/model.go b/model/models/mistral3/model.go
index 6aa7645b5..ed1bb9d9f 100644
--- a/model/models/mistral3/model.go
+++ b/model/models/mistral3/model.go
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ import (
 	"bytes"
 	"image"
 	"slices"
+	"sync"
 
 	"github.com/ollama/ollama/kvcache"
 	"github.com/ollama/ollama/ml"
@@ -107,14 +108,37 @@ func (m *Model) EncodeMultimodal(ctx ml.Context, multimodalData []byte) (any, er
 	features, size := m.MultiModalProjector.Forward(ctx, visionOutputs, size)
 
 	// split into patches to be sent to the text transformer
-	rows := make([]ml.Tensor, size.Y)
+	parent := imageFeatures{tensor: features}
+	rows := make([]*imageRow, size.Y)
 	for i := range rows {
-		rows[i] = features.View(ctx, features.Stride(1)*i*size.X, features.Dim(0), features.Stride(1), size.X)
+		rows[i] = &imageRow{parent: &parent, s: i, shape: []int{features.Dim(0), size.X}}
 	}
 
 	return rows, nil
 }
 
+type imageFeatures struct {
+	tensor ml.Tensor
+
+	dataOnce sync.Once
+	data     []float32
+}
+
+type imageRow struct {
+	parent *imageFeatures
+	s      int
+	shape  []int
+}
+
+func (r *imageRow) data() []float32 {
+	n := 1
+	for _, s := range r.shape {
+		n *= s
+	}
+
+	return r.parent.data[r.s*n : (r.s+1)*n]
+}
+
 // PostTokenize arranges Mistral 3's inputs for the forward pass
 // In Mistral 3 and Pixtral, the input patches are arranged as follows:
 // [IMG]...[IMG][IMG_BREAK][IMG]...[IMG][IMG_BREAK][IMG]...[IMG][IMG_END]
@@ -126,11 +150,11 @@ func (m *Model) PostTokenize(inputs []input.Input) ([]input.Input, error) {
 		if inp.Multimodal == nil {
 			result = append(result, inp)
 		} else {
-			inputMultimodal := inp.Multimodal.([]ml.Tensor)
+			inputMultimodal := inp.Multimodal.([]*imageRow)
 			for i, row := range inputMultimodal {
 				// [IMG]
-				result = append(result, input.Input{Token: 10, Multimodal: row, MultimodalHash: inp.MultimodalHash, SameBatch: row.Dim(1) + 1})
-				result = append(result, slices.Repeat([]input.Input{{Token: 10}}, row.Dim(1)-1)...)
+				result = append(result, input.Input{Token: 10, Multimodal: row, MultimodalHash: inp.MultimodalHash, SameBatch: row.shape[1] + 1})
+				result = append(result, slices.Repeat([]input.Input{{Token: 10}}, row.shape[1]-1)...)
 				if i == len(inputMultimodal)-1 {
 					// [IMG_END]
 					result = append(result, input.Input{Token: 13})
diff --git a/model/models/mistral3/model_text.go b/model/models/mistral3/model_text.go
index 03b8caa0c..f633d45fd 100644
--- a/model/models/mistral3/model_text.go
+++ b/model/models/mistral3/model_text.go
@@ -110,8 +110,19 @@ func (m *TextModel) Forward(ctx ml.Context, inputs, positions, outputs ml.Tensor
 
 	// image embeddings
 	for _, image := range batch.Multimodal {
-		visionOutputs := image.Multimodal.(ml.Tensor)
-		ctx.Forward(visionOutputs.Copy(ctx, hiddenState.View(ctx, image.Index*hiddenState.Stride(1), visionOutputs.Dim(0)*visionOutputs.Dim(1))))
+		row := image.Multimodal.(*imageRow)
+		row.parent.dataOnce.Do(func() {
+			// use a new, throwaway context so the image tensor is not added to the graph
+			m.Backend().NewContext().Forward(row.parent.tensor).Compute(row.parent.tensor)
+			row.parent.data = row.parent.tensor.Floats()
+		})
+
+		imageFeature, err := ctx.Input().FromFloatSlice(row.data(), row.shape...)
+		if err != nil {
+			panic(err)
+		}
+
+		ctx.Forward(imageFeature.Copy(ctx, hiddenState.View(ctx, image.Index*hiddenState.Stride(1), imageFeature.Dim(0)*imageFeature.Dim(1))))
 	}
 
 	for i, layer := range m.Layers {